New York Yankees‘ Anthony Rizzo responds to questions during a news interview before a baseball game … [+] against the Houston Astros Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.Anthony Rizzo homered on May 20 in Cincinnati, something he has done plenty of times from his decade with the Cubs spanning 1,308 games.
A week later, he collided with Fernando Tatis Jr. on a pickoff play at first midway through a 10-7 win over San Diego. At the time, Rizzo was diagnosed was a neck injury that on the surface seemed somewhat minor, the kind of thing where a player is day-to-day and that is what the Yankees opted for after not placing him on the seven-day concussion injured list that was created in 2011, three years after Ryan Church was concussed twice with the Mets and flew to Colorado with the symptoms.
A little over two months later and following one frustrating unproductive at-bat after another — with the exception of a 4-for-4 game on July 23 — perhaps there is an answer for why Rizzo’s slump has persisted for so long.
The answer is post-concussion symptoms which will keep Rizzo sidelined for at least few weeks with the hope the first baseman is over them upon returning from a playoff push that will be a full-blown sprint.
There was the time when Rizzo was working on early hitting by taking swings off a tee on the field and working on spraying line drives, and two days later he seemingly was fixed with the four-hit game but he went 3-for-25 after that and then it was when the fogginess appeared.
New York Yankees Anthony Rizzo argues a called third strike with home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi in the … [+] fifth inning of a baseball game Sunday, July 30, 2023, in Baltimore. The Orioles won 9-3. (AP Photo/Gail Burton)
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved “Over the last few weeks, you start going to different checklists of mechanics, timing, consistently being late,” Rizzo said during an 18-minute press conference Thursday that featured several extensive answers. “Why am I being consistently late? I’ve made these adjustments plenty of times in my career. I just didn’t forget how to do this all of a sudden.”
It was not as if Rizzo forgot to hit, but it seems the trauma contributed to his average plummeting from .304 to .244. Since the collision with Tatis, Rizzo has struck out 44 times in 192 plate appearances, giving him a rate of one strikeout per every 4.4 plate appearances. In that span Rizzo struck out more than once in 10 games, including last Sunday when he struck out five times for the first time in his career.
It was the day before he had five of the Yankees’ 18 strikeouts when the fogginess often associated with concussion symptoms started appearing but Rizzo wanted to try and gut it out.
“They came back saying I’m moving a lot slower than the normal person’s reaction time would be and that’s definitely alarming, especially with what we do for a living,” Rizzo said. “The good news is with the regiment they put me on, I should be fully healed.
“Everything we talked about and everything they came back with basically was a silver lining of I’m not crazy for walking back to the dugout consistently thinking how I missed that pitch because I usually don’t miss that pitch.”
Rizzo has been missing pitches so often that his strikeout rate is not only a career-high 23 percent but it is an increase of 4.6 percent and it also caused his walk rate to drop from 10.6 percent to 8.3.
“From what I love to do, is there a little bit of worry? Yes,” Rizzo said. “But just the rest of the treatment with success of people overcoming this — not only overcoming this but the concussion resigning and being completely back to normal. They say once you’re back to normal, you’re back to normal and you’re not really in risk.”
Back in May, the mentality of wanting to gut it out still existed with Aaron Judge saying: “You kind of get concerned but he’s a tough guy. He’s going to have the record for the most hit by pitches in a couple of years. So I think he can handle a lot, so I’m looking forward to seeing how’s doing.“
Those are similar to words stated by Church in the summer of 2009 shortly after David Wright was beaned by Matt Cain’s fastball.
“From the outside looking in, the smartest thing to do obviously was to go on [the DL],” Church said 14 summers ago. “But for me, I was trying to just get back and play. I mean, they were telling me if I would have went out there and got another one, my career would have been over. And that didn’t really sink in. And it wasn’t like anybody was telling me, no, don’t do it, go on the DL,“ Church said.
It’s unknown if Rizzo had the concussion back in May, but it seemed like it might have been correlated to the significant struggles. Now the hope it he returns to some semblance of normalcy which is somewhere between the .304 hitter he was on Memorial Day weekend to the .244 hitter he is at the moment because of the fogginess in seeing pitches properly enough to be productive.
It has been a trying week for the Yankees, who lost Domingo German because he is headed to rehab for an alcohol problem. That occurred after the Yankees made two minor trades ahead of Tuesday’s deadline and played two somewhat listless games against the Rays but at least they have some answers about Rizzo’s deepest slump of his productive career.