<div>FROM espn:</div><div><br></div>If the playoffs started now, the <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/team/_/name/bal/baltimore-orioles">Baltimore
Orioles</a> would be in -- they hold a one-game lead over the Rangers (who lost
Thursday afternoon to the Yankees) as they go into their game tonight against
the Royals. That lead is obviously precarious, with the Yankees and Indians
trying to hang in there, and made even more precarious by the doubts that <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/29170/chris-davis">Chris Davis</a> and <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/31097/manny-machado">Manny Machado</a> can repeat their monster first
halves. <br><br>Let's start with Machado. His defense is so superlative that
it's easy to overlook his offense, but he hit .310 with 39 doubles in the first
half. For most of the season, he's been on pace to break Earl Webb's record of
67 doubles, but that pace has dropped to 62 as he's struggled at the plate in
recent weeks. In fact, his offensive output has actually been sliding since
June. Through May 31, he was hitting .331/.363/.515; since then he's hit
.271/.293/.397 with 41 strikeouts and five walks in 47 games. <br><br>As Justin
Havens of ESPN Stats & Information reports, "Machado's approach has
completely fallen apart since June 1 -- he's striking out more often, walking
less, swinging through pitches more often and chasing more pitches out of the
strike zone." Justin reports that Machado has especially struggled with two
strikes; through May, he was hitting .267 with two strikes, but since then he's
hitting .170 with a chase percentage that's increased from 33 percent to 47
percent thanks largely to a heavy dosage of sliders that he can't lay off. In
other words, typical struggles you expect to see from a kid who just turned 21
and isn't named <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/30836/mike-trout">Mike Trout</a>. <br><br>Machado has also
struggled against good fastballs since June 1; on pitches clocked at 93-plus
mph, he's hit .093 with a .230 OPS, worst in baseball. The sample size is small
-- just 163 pitches -- but all the indicators are down compared to the first two
months, with a swing-and-miss percentage up from 15 percent to 23 percent and
line drive rate down from 24 percent to 9 percent. He's just not hitting the
good heat. Machado hasn't missed a game, so while it sounds a little bit like a
young hitter struggling to adjust, it also looks like a guy who could use a day
off. <br><br>As for Davis, Joe Sheehan pointed out last week … <br>
<blockquote>Through the end of May, Davis was running the lowest strikeout rate
(23%) and best K/UIBB (2.3) of his career. Some of the improvement in his walk
rate might have reasonably been credited to the power he was showing -- there is
some relationship between power and walks drawn, but by and large, he looked
like a more mature version of his established self. For statheads, it was an
easy story to sell. We love to make the point that being patient at the plate
isn't just about drawing walks, but about getting better pitches to hit and
producing better results on those pitches. <br><br>What's happened since the end
of May has put the lie to that. For while Davis has continued to hit for power,
with 18 homers and a .678 slugging, he has gone back to being an even worse
version of his old self. Davis posted a 60/7 K/UIBB in those two months,
striking out in 36 percent of his plate appearances.</blockquote><br><br>Joe
wrote that a week ago. The numbers now read .261/.320/.636 since June 1 with 69
strikeouts and eight unintentional walks. That's still a huge offensive force,
as long as the balls keep leaving the park, but it's a big drop from the MVP
candidate hitting .356/.442/.749 through May and closer to <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/3504/raul-ibanez">Raul Ibanez</a> than <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/5544/miguel-cabrera">Miguel Cabrera</a>. Like Machado, Davis has
started to expand the strike zone; he chased 28 percent of pitches out of the
zone the first two months, but that has increased to 35 percent since. As a
result, his batting average and on-base percentage have decreased. <br><br>The
net effect is that Machado and Davis are now using up a lot more outs to create
runs. Through May, the Orioles averaged 5.1 runs per game; since June 1, they've
averaged 4.5 runs per game. <br><br>If Machado is a young player the league has
figured out (for now) and Davis is, as Joe wrote, a "35-homer guy having a
year," then we shouldn't necessarily expect them to reverse course back to what
they did in April and May. Which means the Orioles, if they want to hold on to
the wild card or catch the Red Sox and Rays, need some other players to step up.