Eric Sogard has not been good this season. In fact, he really hasn’t had a handle on things at the plate for the past calendar year.
Although an incredibly hot start left him with respectable overall numbers in 2017, he posted a miserable .575 OPS after July 1, managing only four extra base hits over the season’s final three months. He has ridden that slump right into 2018, posting a .422 OPS through Sunday, with just 13 hits, 10 of them singles, on the season. His OPS+ on the year—which neutralizes a player’s OPS for ballpark and league-wide offensive trends, a 100 OPS+ is considered a league-average hitter—is just 16, essentially meaning he is 84% less effective than an average major league hitter. That ranks him above only the woeful White Sox outfielder Trayce Thompson (who has an OPS+ of 3) for all hitters with at least 100 plate appearances this season.
As it stands now, only infielder John Vuckovich took as many trips to the plate as Sorgard in a single season for the Brewers and offered so little production. A slick-fielding utility infielder acquired from the Phillies before the 1973 season, Vuckovich made 141 plate appearances that year and tallied just 16 hits and 11 walks. He became one of just six players since the deadball era to make so many PAs while registering a sub-.200 mark in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. His OPS+ for the season was just 8.
Even an uptick in production would leave Sogard’s 2018 among the worst offensive seasons in team history. Only four other players in team history have seen 100 PAs and registered an OPS+ of 25 or lower.
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Sogard’s inability to drive the ball this year, however, leaves him without equal in team history. His slugging percentage is just .170 and he has only three extra base hits (all doubles and all collected in a three-day stretch in early April). Even Vuckovich in his 1973 campaign slugged .195. No one else in team history (100 PA minimum) has ever slugged below .214. Indeed, only eight players league-wide have seen so much action and slugged lower than .170 over the past 30 seasons. Sogard is also riding a streak of 33 games without an extra base hit, the sixth longest in team history (Craig Counsell has the two longest XBH-less streaks in team history, of 40 and 46 games).
Of course, there is still time for Sogard to turn things around. No one should expect him to return to the form of his first month and a half from 2017 (he matched his career high in home runs in a season after his first six Brewers at bats, mind you) and the recent call-up of infielder Brad Miller leaves him without a real role on the team, but he did lace a couple of solid singles over the weekend series against the Cardinals and he is, astonishingly, batting .400 as a pinch hitter (6-15) on the year.
But even after the team chose not to demote him when calling up Miller, Sogard probably remains the roster’s 25th man and will need to get hot in a hurry if he is to avoid an ignominious place in franchise history.
