Is it time to consider Rickie Weeks a career bust?

[CubsFan7724]

This guy has been hyped up since his minor league days, and after his good 2nd half last year, people had assumed he would break out. But he has regressed back to a .200 hitter; he's barely above the Mendoza line. He's at an age where he should be in the prime of his career, but instead he's getting worse. Even in his 2nd half last year, he only hit over .250 in August. Is this guy just going to be one of those overhyped career busts at this point, a la Corey Patterson, who for years was taken much higher than he should have been?

[freeling_prideful]

Honestly Weeks is the unluckiest guy on the face of the earth. His career BABIP is like .280 even though his career LD% is around 19% (indicating an expected BABIP of around .310).

This year, though, he's been legitimately bad as a hitter, getting only 11% line drives and as a result a BABIP of only around .220. He has a good eye, as evidenced by his 29 walks in 213 at-bats, but he has also K'ed roughly 25% of the time. It's funny, b/c there are a lot of guys who can strike out 1/4 of the time and still put up a batting average in the 270-280 range (take a look at Alex Gordon this season). For some reason, Weeks is just a horrible hitter for average.

If you watch him, he doesn't have a level swing. It's very upper-cutty, very much like Gary Sheffield's swing. Unfortunately for Weeks, he doesn't have Sheffield's otherworldly talent for actually getting the bat on the ball...so when he hits it, he crushes it, but that's not very often.

[Ender]

I'd be a lot more worried if his stats weren't so BABIP driven. .228 this year vs .296 career.

He is on pace for 120 R, 20 HR, 55 RBI, 26 SB which are all right about what I expected over a full healthy season. He just has to raise his average 50-60 points.