PHOENIX — Once again, Josh Smith battles the bane of his still-young career: The late-season fade.
Smith, who was the Rangers shortstop and hit leadoff on Wednesday against Arizona, entered the game with a .185 batting average over his last six games. But it’s mostly been a long, steady slide since the All-Star break.
His slash line in the second half entering Wednesday: .207/.293/.283/.576. Among the 120 MLB players with at least 150 plate appearances in the second half, his OPS is the third lowest.
And it matches a troubling trend. For his career, Smith is a .775 OPS guy in the first half; .557 in the second half.
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“It’s still early in his career, but it’s a fair question,” manager Bruce Bochy said of the trend. “So you have to look at why. What can we do different for this to not happen.
“It can be routine, what you are doing every day, maybe taking too many swings. It can be workload. Or it can be mental. And these are all things we are going to have to look at because it’s been a significant drop off.”
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Because Smith is slightly built — he’s listed at 5-10 and just 170 pounds — the easiest theory is that his body wears down more significantly under the duress of everyday play.
Smith, who entered Wednesday with exactly 500 plate appearances, is likely to end up with the second-highest total of plate appearances on the team behind Wyatt Langford. Marcus Semien and Adolis García both have more, too, but both were out with injuries. At his current pace, Smith is likely to finish with about 580 plate appearances; he set a career high in 2024 with 592.
With both Semien and Corey Seager out, the Rangers haven’t been afforded the opportunity to more regularly rest Smith, either. They could, however, drop him in the batting order, but Bochy has kept him hitting leadoff, a spot that demands high on-base percentage. He has hit leadoff in 28 of 35 starts since the All-Star break. The only games in which he started and didn’t hit leadoff were games in which an opponent started a lefty.
The problem: The Rangers don’t have many other options there, either. Smith leads the team with 78 starts in the top spot followed by Sam Haggerty (24) and Semien (21), both of whom are currently on the IL. Langford, with seven starts at the top, is probably the best option, but at the moment, he’s more needed in the No. 2 spot with Seager out of the lineup. The only other players on the active roster with starts in the leadoff spot this year are Michael Helman (3) and Joc Pederson (1).
“We have other options,” Bochy said. “We just don’t have a lot of other options. We’ve talked about [Cody] Freeman. We’ve talked about Joc.”
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