What is the main factor behind Giancarlo Stanton’s inability to hit this season?

If you’re a hardcore fantasy baseball player like me, you’re generally in tune with how most players, especially elite players, are performing. I’m not saying that I can recite a player’s OPS by heart or anything, but I know that Daniel Murphy apparently still thinks he’s in the NLCS with the way he’s hitting, and Justin Upton and Melvin Upton Jr. may have switched places. So, it took me by complete surprise when I was watching the Mets play the Marlins the other day and saw Giancarlo Stanton’s stat line.

What in the world? I don’t own Stanton on any of my fantasy teams, so I guess I just haven’t played close attention. But, holy cow.

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For those of you who, like me, have apparently missed the news, Stanton has been pretty awful this season. You know what’s a bad slash line? .217/.307/.464.

You know who wishes he had that slash line (which belongs to notable superstar and part-time player Byung-ho Park)? Stanton, who is sitting with an even worse .202/.318/.452 slash line.

Now look, a .770 OPS isn’t THAT terrible, especially since Stanton is still on pace for 34 homers despite missing some time. But when you’re a superstar like Stanton with a career .900 OPS, it’s a monstrous disappointment.

So, what’s going on with Stanton? Well, certainly, some of it is bad luck. Stanton is sitting with a .247 BABIP, despite a career mark of .323.

He’s making hard or medium contact 81.2% of the time, which is in line with his career number of 81.7%. Yes, his line drive percentage is down a bit (13.9% from a career mark of 18.5%), but that’s not enough to account for that big of a difference between Stanton’s current and career BABIP. So, it’s fair to say that Stanton has been somewhat unlucky.

But, he’s also been…well…bad. His strikeout percentage is 34.2%. Even for a slugger like Stanton, who strikes out a lot, that is an absurdly high number.

And his ISO is only .250, down from his career mark of .275. So, for those of you who hate percentages and acronyms – I’m talking to you, Grandma – that means that Stanton is putting the ball in play less and, when he does, he isn’t hitting it with as much raw power as he usually does.

So how in the world does a 26-year-old slugger drop off like this? Well, rather than just give you what I think the answer is, I’m going to force you to follow me down the super deep rabbit hole I found myself in while trying to answer the question. Don’t worry, we’ll find our way out (sort of). But, let’s have a little fun.

When I first started digging into this, I honestly thought that the answer was going to be that Stanton saw a higher percentage of sliders, a pitch with which he has struggled during his career. Here’s a chart, courtesy of BrooksBaseball.net, that shows how many pitches Stanton has seen in his career before this year, broken down by pitch type, and the results against each:

First, why would anyone throw Stanton a changeup with those numbers? Seriously. But anyway, sure enough, Stanton has seen a somewhat higher percentage of sliders in 2016 (about 25% compared to about 17% career).

The problem is, he isn’t doing that badly against them, at least not to the extent that would explain his massive dropoff. He’s got a BAA of .244 and an SLG of .400, meaning, as you can see from the chart above, he’s getting more hits than usual against the slider but not getting as many extra base hits. But, in researching Stanton’s performance against sliders, I noticed the real trouble spot.

He is getting eaten up by fastballs. He’s batting .170 against the pitch with a .447 slugging percentage this year. That’s pretty shocking, particularly when you consider the gaudy numbers above.

Two other things stood out to me. First, Stanton has seen a high percentage of right-handed pitchers this season, in about 82% of his plate appearances, as compared to about 77% in his career and the league average this year for right-handed hitters, which is closer to 70%. Second, although he’s struggled with making contact with pitches pretty much everywhere inside and outside the zone, he’s been particularly terrible at making contact against pitches on the inside part of the plate and just off the plate inside. I could give you another chart, but I stick strictly to a one-chart limit per article. Just take my word for it.

Do you see where I’m going here? Of course you don’t. Because it’s a pretty thin theory.

But, I think that because Stanton has been seeing a higher number of right-handers who are throwing a higher number of sliders, he’s struggling to handle pitches, particularly fastballs, on the inner half of the plate. I mean, there’s a reason that switch-hitters exist, and it’s because hitting a breaking pitch from someone who is throwing from the same side as you’re batting is tough. So, I think all these sliders from all these right-handers have gotten him a bit screwed up, and he’s in a horrible slump.

There you go. That’s my big theory.

Look, I’m not saying I’ve definitively figured out what’s happened to Stanton with that analysis. But, absent him hiding an injury (which is always a possibility), I just don’t see any reasonable explanation for this other than it’s a rough slump.

26-year-old elite players do not suddenly forget how to hit. It doesn’t happen.

So yes, I think you’re entitled to be worried about Stanton. But me? I’m buying.

And I fully expect a 10-homer month at some point this season. But, if someone could tell some of Stanton’s opposing managers to throw a few lefties out there shortly to help speed his recovery along, I’d appreciate it.

Dan Harris is a correspondent with FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him @danharris80.