On Sunday, J.D. Drew did something that has been increasingly rare over the course of this season: He made an impact.
The Red Sox right fielder went 3-for-3 with a walk and drove in a pair of runs in his team’s 5-3 victory over Oakland. (Recap.)
The performance represented an exception to what has been one of the worst seasons of the 34-year-old’s career.
Drew is batting .257, his lowest average since hitting .252 in 2002. His on-base percentage – the number that typically produces Drew’s greatest value – is a pedestrian .347, his lowest mark since he produced a .340 OBP in his first full big league season in 1999. Though he has 18 homers, his .792 OPS is his lowest since 2002, and nearly 100 points below his career mark of .887.
In short, it has been a disappointing year for the right-fielder, and now the Sox are left to wonder what he might be able to deliver in 2011.
Barring a stunning development, Drew will be back next season for the final year of the deal he signed following the 2006 season. Though his five-year, $70 million deal included a clause that allowed the Sox to void his deal if he finished the 2010 season on the D.L. and could not play outfield the following year, there is no sign that any such condition would sideline Drew. (It is also worth noting that with expanded September rosters, players are almost never put on the D.L. in September.)
So, the question remains: will Drew be able to return to his role as one of the more productive all-around outfielders in the game, or at 34, is his career in irreversible decline?
When Drew opted out of his contract with the Dodgers following the 2006 season, the Red Sox knew immediately that they wanted to acquire the outfielder for the contributions he could make as a hitter, fielder and baserunner. But they knew with the same amount of certainty that they would have to go to lengths that they had never reached for the outfielder.
Drew left Los Angeles after the first two seasons of a five-year, $55 million deal he’d signed following the 2004 season. The Sox knew that in order to sign the right fielder, they would need to swallow hard and make him a five-year offer.
At the time, the Sox had never signed a player to a deal of that kind of length. Drew, at 31 and with an injury history that had earned him a somewhat infamous reputation, did not represent an obvious target for a deal of such a duration.
The team was under no illusions that he would be able to make it through the contract without suffering a well-nigh inevitable decline. Even so, the team believed that his well above-average skill set as a hitter, baserunner and outfielder might allow him to remain a useful player over the life of the five-year, $70 million deal to which he was ultimately signed.
Through 2009, the Sox were more than happy with their investment. Last offseason, Sox GM Theo Epstein noted that the outfielder’s performance had been worth “a tick more” than his salary of $14 million per season.
But that has not been the case this year, as he is producing his worst offensive season since coming to the Sox. His struggles have been particularly pronounced over the last couple of months. Since July 3, Drew is hitting just .222 with a .315 OBP, .371 slugging mark and .686 OPS.
Drew’s keen sense of the strike zone has been disrupted this year. While he hasn’t been as theatrical as David Ortiz, he has clearly been irked for much of the year by the strike zone, with more demonstrations of disbelief than at any prior point in his Red Sox career. The belief that the strike zone has expanded has seemingly caused Drew to change his approach at the plate.
In his first three years with the Sox, 70 percent of the pitches he took were balls (year-by-year, he took balls of 69 percent of pitches in 2007 and 70 percent in both 2008 and 2009). Since the 2002 season, Drew’s takes have come on balls in no less than 69 percent of his at-bats. This year, however, 65 percent of the pitches he’s taken have been called balls.
 
According to Fangraphs.com, 20.6 percent of his swings have come at pitches out of the strike zone.  That number represents his highest rate of expanding the strike zone since 2003, and a significant increase over the rate at which he’s controlled the strike zone in his first three years with the Sox.
That said, it remains to be seen whether this year is an aberration or a trend. One major league talent evaluator last week said that the outfielder’s bat speed did not appear diminished this year, and that his swing remained as balanced as ever.
That being the case, perhaps Drew’s production decline this year can be chalked up – at least in part – to a changing strike zone as well as bad luck (his .285 batting average on balls in play is his lowest since 2003). That, at least, would be the Sox’ hope. He has, after all, had similar seasons before, producing a sub-.800 OPS three other times in his career. In each of those, he rebounded the following year, improving that mark by at least 100 points.
Still, at age 34, Drew is at a point in his career where players usually exhibit decline. When they signed Drew, the Sox expected that he would be on the downward slope by the time that 2011 arrived. Now, following a 2010 season that has represented a steep drop in performance, they are left to hope that such a forecast does not get fulfilled in spectacular fashion.