Updating Jose Tabata's 2011 Season

A couple of weeks into the season, I wrote a post about Jose Tabata's fast start to the season. Through his first 11 games, Tabata hit .325/.460/.525 with 2 home runs and 9 walks drawn. It was a very encouraging start to the season and he had fans very excited about what he would do in his first full season in the big leagues.

On April 15th, the Pirates starting batting Andrew McCutchen in the lead off hole and moved Tabata back to the number 2 slot. Since that change, Tabata has seemingly pulled a 180 and has hit .198/.283/.302 with 1 home run and 17 strikeouts in 86 at bats (24 games). A lot of people expected that Tabata would fall off from his tear that he began the season on, but I don't think anybody expected his performance to decrease quite like it has.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that Tabata's struggles have been a result of being moved down in the lineup. Personally I don't believe that lineups make any significant difference in most situations. Tabata would probably be in the same situation right now if he hadn't gotten moved down in the lineup.

Like I said before, this isn't a huge surprise. Tabata has less than a full year of big league service time so pitchers are still making adjustments to get him out, and he clearly hasn't been able to adapt to those adjustments well enough to stay successful. When all is said and done, I think Tabata is too talented for his numbers to stay down for very long. You should see him hitting the ball a little better in the coming weeks.