There are two things you can say about Mike Moustakas’s performance in 2012:
1.) He was awesome in April.
2.) He was awful in September.
In between, he just sort of slid his way into oblivion. You can check out the splits at Baseball-Reference, or if you prefer charts, a nice steep slope over at Fangraphs. Either way, it is obvious that the Moose got tired, or the league figured something out.
The good news is that after spending way too much time in Excel, I have compiled Mike’s monthly OPS splits using the data from minorleaguesplits.com (Thanks, Jeff!) and put together this breathtaking chart:
What you can see is that while Moustakas hit a lull mid-season in both 2009 and 2010, he made adjustments and got back on track.
Moose surprised a lot of people with superb glove work all season long last year, and I think it shows that he can be consistent over a long season. Having passed the sophomore slump phase of his career, I’m looking for a big breakthrough in 2013. There may be a lull when the summer hits, but I don’t think it will last as long this time around.
