his k rate has increased considerably. he went on a 5-game hitting streak earlier this season and now he can't hit pitches down the middle. what is going on?

Time for he and Cruz to pick things up. On the plus side he's saving the team some money if we re sign him.

Napoli's career K rate is 25%, and his K rate this season is 31%. It's up some, but not such a dramatic shift given the small sample. His career wOBA is .373 and his season wOBA is .356. Not a huge drop for a guy who can be a streaky hitter. Because of the .444 wOBA beast we saw last season, I think it's tough for us to accept the real Mike Napoli.

Also, remember that Napoli had a pretty slow start last season. I haven't gone to look up exact stats but I thought I remembered him hitting around .200 for a good while into the season last year.

Yea, Nap only hit .220 up until his injury in June last season. He followed that injury by batting .378 over the last three months of the season. The question is...will the .378 Napoli show up this year?

Please remember that while The Real Mike Napoli is not as good as 2011 Mike Napoli, he's still probably the best Catcher in baseball.

@RFan
Not sure what stats you're looking at but Napoli is SO at a .357 rate currently and was as high as 39% 7-8 days ago. Most of his numbers came in a 3-4 game stretch during the first road trip. Thank goodness his defense has been good. We need him to turn the corner offensively though.

Scooby, I agree that a .373 wOBA is great for a catcher. I just think that after Napoli had a season similar to Albert Pujols in his prime, it's tough to accept that he's not going to get 1 or 2 big hits every game. One great thing about Napoli is that even when his batting average is low, he walks enough to keep his OBP at a respectable level.

Fangraphs shows Napoli's K rate at 30.6%.

MLB says 30 K's in 84 AB's. Maybe I figured that wrong, you tell me.

The K rate factors in walks, so you would go off of plate appearance, not at bats.

Its time to pop open another button on that jersey. Power comes with style!

His swing looks the same as last year, it just seems to be a timing issue and an inconsistent ability for pitch recognition. Napoli will be fine... Don't let his 2011 stats bloat your expectations of him.

The flaw in Napoli's swing is that it's not intersecting the path of the ball often enough.

well, the rangers initially brought him in to hit against left-handed pitching. He was a lefty-specialist... so yeah, last year was mostly an abberation. Not to discredit his amazing run but for last year, Napoli's performance was statistically an inprobability based off his previous years. I just hope Coolbaugh can shed some light to Nap and get him to replicate some of those '11's numbers again.

to be fair, prior to last year he had a near 800 ops against righties, so it's not like he was a scrub.

I disagree that Nap is a lefty specialist. His career wOBA vs. righties is .362. By comparison, the avg. catcher had a wOBA of .307 last year. Nap is a v. good hitting catcher against both lefties and righties. (In fact, this year, Nap's wOBA is higher against righties.) He just isn't Albert Pujols in his prime, which is what he appeared to be in the second half of last year.

As poorly as we perceive Napoli to be playing, he's currently 7th among catchers in wOBA. Take a look at his monthly wOBA #s over the course of his career. You'll see lots of months below .330 and lots of months above .380. He's a streaky hitter, and he's cold right now.

I wonder what % of the time he takes the first pitch right down the middle. Reminding me of Julio Franco.