This is the story of Dr. BRYCE and Mr. Bryce

Well, if Ross keeps doing that every third game, you keep throwing him out there.


When can I worry about Bryce without seeming like a worry wart?

Now maybe?I'm gonna stream of consciousness this so early apologies if it doesn't flow well. Bryce has had a bad three weeks hitting .155 / .242 / .310 before last night. And while he went 3-4 last night it was far from an impressive break out. Before now I checked for an obvious injury that might have happened but Bryce's only problem was a groin issue in early May and he came back to hit .429 with 4 homers over the next week. So that makes me think an injury - or at least an obvious one that happened this year - is unlikely.

I also checked and it's not exactly like last year because last year he began to slump even before April was over.

The simple answer is "everyone has slumps, just wait it out" but if you want Bryce to be BRYCE that may not be true.  Let's check out his worst stretch in 2015 then. In 16 games - which is what we are also looking at in 2017 - hmmm he hit .216 / .406 / .353 at one point... That's not quite as bad but it's not a crazy far away if you are just looking at AVG and SLG. 

And here's the thing about that bad 16 games.  It was April into May. Remember BRYCE of 2015 has hitting .245 / .405  / .457 on May 5th.  So a slow start isn't crazy in fact you could argue that he's a had a slow period each of the last three seasons in the first couple months. In 2015 it pretty much started the year before he broke out in May. In 2016 it started at the end of April after a hot start and never really went away. In 2017 it started mid May. So part of me really wants to say wait another week at least.

But there are worrying signs though. K-rate has spiked and his isoSLG has dipped and this isn't BABIP driven.  Take a look at his soft hit percentages by month

April 9.7%
May 19.4%
June 30%

His GB rate is jumped way up... It's all bothersome, I'll admit. Of course June is just a week so one game versus Kershaw can skew it but still. Let's look at 2015 monthlies... K-rate happened.  isoSLG issue happened. (not in same month) The 19.4% - higher than any month in 2015.

Here's my real worry. What was wrong with Bryce last year? We don't know. We assume he was hurt (and I think that's fair) and he never got better as the year went along. When he started hitting to start this year, we assumed he was 100% healthy again but what if he isn't. What if he was just healthy then with a chronic issue waiting until a certain bad swing, tough fall, or just wear and tear brought it back to life? I'd feel better if we knew exactly what the issue was last year so we could rule this out but we don't so it's completely rational to be in a place where you are thinking it might be happening again.

But I'll stay with cautious optimism that it's just a slump. This upcoming homestand makes a nice line in the sand place. Neither Texas nor Atlanta have good pitching in general. You are facing both of them at home. If he doesn't have a decent homestand then I'll join you in worry. What's decent? Well you'd like him to hit like .275+ with power but sometimes you don't get the luck, so I'll be looking at that and at how he's hitting the ball.  A bunch of weak grounders and I'm worried regardless if a few trickle through. A bunch of line drives and I feel better even if they are right at people. 

The Nats don't need Bryce to win the division, so there's that, but he's a guy that seems to step up in bright lights so having him healthy for the playoffs would be nice, even if its just for an immeasurable psychological boost for me personally.