Royals outfielder Alex Gordon focused on helping team down the stretch

Ten years into his major-league career, Alex Gordon has not changed much. He still sweats through the same pregame routine each day, the ritual broken down to the minute, the same lifts and the same exercises. He still cuts the same figure in the Royals clubhouse, a stoic leader who commands respect from teammates, the baseball personification of quiet strength.

His hair is a little shorter now. His family is a little bigger. His perspective is a little deeper. But on most days, you can still find him in the same place at the same time, 32 years old and still built like a facsimile of a Greek god, looking more or less like the 23 year old who debuted with the Royals in 2007.

Ten seasons later, to the people inside the clubhouse, Gordon is still “Gordo”, which is where the disconnect begins. As the Royals began the second half of the season here at Comerica Park, Gordon was mired in the worst year of his career. Just months after signing a four-year, $72 million deal to remain in Kansas City, Gordon entered Saturday batting a career-low .205 with an anemic .655 OPS.

His power numbers are down. His strikeouts are up. And for now, as the Royals hover around .500 and an offense searches for a jump-start, the answers have proved elusive — even for a franchise cornerstone.

“All I can say,’ Gordon said, “is I’ve played like crap.”

The 2016 season has been a frustrating one, Gordon says, and part of this is obvious. He suffered another injury, siphoning a month from his season. His team has scuffled while attempting to return to the playoffs for the third straight year. But for Gordon, much of the frustration stems from an inability to snap a prolonged slump. He opened the season batting just .211 in 42 games before breaking a bone in his hand on May 23. He returned to the lineup on June 25 and is just 11 for 58 (.189) in 16 games since.

“Baseball is a hard game,” Gordon said. “Sometimes it doesn’t always work out the way you want it to. But at the same time, you just got to keep pushing on and move on. The second half — hopefully better things are yet to come.”

In an interview with The Star this week, Gordon said he has worked through some mechanical adjustments with Royals hitting coach Dale Sveum. He declined to discuss specifics. He sought to put the focus on the future.

But how to explain the numbers? In short, Gordon’s struggles have coincided with a rise in strikeouts and a decline in his contact rate. What is causing the issues is harder to discern. But both scouts and advanced stats can offer theories. Entering Saturday, Gordon was striking out in 28.4 percent of his plate appearances, a career high and a significant increase from his career average of 21.1 percent. His contact rate sat at a career-low 70.5 percent.

When Gordon does makes contact, his batted-ball data align closely with his career averages. According to FanGraphs, he is making soft contact on 17.8 percent of batted balls, compared to 17 percent for his career. He is making hard contact 32.6 percent of the time, compared to 31.4 percent for his career. He also is hitting roughly the same percentage of line drives, fly balls and ground balls.

But there is one difference, and it’s been most noticeable in Gordon’s ability to make contact on pitches outside the strike zone. For his career, when Gordon has swung at pitches outside the strike zone, he has made contact more than 60 percent of the time. This year, the number is down to 44.7 percent.

“It seems like he’s missing on mistakes a lot more than he has in the past,” said one rival scout. “He’s getting into a lot of pitcher’s counts.”

For a club beset by injuries — a team that lost third baseman Mike Moustakas for the season, Gordon for a month and Lorenzo Cain for a stretch with a hamstring injury — the lack of production from an All-Star left fielder has offered another challenge. For now, the Royals view Gordon’s production as imperative as they attempt to engineer a second-half push.

“We’re going to need to get him going, that’s for sure,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “He’s going to be key.”

The club likely will monitor options before the Aug. 1 trade deadline, looking for a bat that could provide a spark to an inconsistent offense. But if the Royals do not find a match — or if they find the price too high — they can at least hope that an improved Gordon could boost an offense that entered Saturday ranked 14th in the American League in runs scored.

“The beauty of this game is even if you get off to a rough start, it’s 162 games,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “You can’t hide for that long. With the type of player he is, and what he’s done throughout his career, you just know his numbers aren’t going to stay like that for the rest of the season.”

For Gordon and the Royals, it was not supposed to be like this, of course. Eight months ago, Gordon became a free agent for the first time, his services open to the highest bidder. The Royals beat the odds, signing a homegrown star to a four-year deal. The contract was hailed as a victory, both for a small-market team working on a limited budget, and for a city that had witnessed Gordon’s evolution from top prospect to lost third baseman to All-Star left fielder.

The Royals believed in Gordon and were confident in the investment. Club officials maintained that his work ethic and natural athleticism would allow him to age gracefully during the length of the deal. For now, Gordon still has another three seasons to make the contract look like a prudent decision. For now, he dismisses the notion that the pressures of the contract have contributed in any way to his slump.

“Everyone is going to try to find a reason for why it’s happening,” Gordon said. “But it’s nothing to do with the contract. I’ve been here for long enough where it’s just another year.”

As Gordon finished an interview on Friday afternoon, he exited the visitor’s clubhouse here at Comerica Park and headed toward the batting cage. As the second half began, he had a pregame routine to finish. In so many ways, this is Gordon. But as the summer stretches on, and a baseball team attempts to surge back into contention, the Royals are still waiting for the real Gordon to arrive.

“I’m not going to sit here and just think about the first half and what I did wrong,” Gordon said. “It’s about moving forward in this game and what you can do to help the team now.”

This story was originally published July 16, 2016 at 7:54 PM with the headline "Royals outfielder Alex Gordon focused on helping team down the stretch."