August Rios = Placido Polanco

[Inukchuk]

Anyone else perplexed with his post All Star power outage? I would say he might be tired or banged up, but his average is still through the roof (368 this month). Dare I mention the home run derby curse? Any canucks out there have insight?

[Inukchuk]

no one has any guesses?

[baseballstud]

what are we guessing? the man hasn't been hitting HR's, what can we do about it dude?

[Inukchuk]

Wow, that helped out a ton. Now I know exactly why he's lost his power stroke. Thanks!

Anyone else have any idea as to why he might not be hitting for power?

[Guzman24]

Its tough to say.

Look at his stats the last two seasons:

2006 :128GP/450AB/.302AVG/17HR/82RBIS/15SB

2007 :125GP/502AB/.310AVG/20HR/67RBIS/12SB

Very much the same. 15 less RBI's cause the Jays are having a tough time getting on base this year.

Possibly he's just running out of gas as he hasnt trained himself to do it over a full season yet?

Considering that the avg is still up, I wouldn't worry too much about Rios, he's a great player now and will only get better with experience.

[sportsguy138]

I think you forgot to mention the part where Rios was out with a staff infection and he struggled a lot getting back to form after that injury. Before the injury his numbers were on pace for a much higher total and even though he might have not kept up his pace, would have definitely ended up with better numbers than he did last year.