I guess we just have different opinions on what constitutes a slump. Desmond has been underperforming Cristian Guzman by about 30 points in both average and OBP all season, and people around here absolutely CRUCIFY Guzman for his batting. Toss in the 40 error pace and I can't see how playing him up here so he can "learn" is doing anything but conceding the season to "let the kids play."
Agian this might be a totally different sport but look at what happened to Peyton Manning. He was a highly promsing rookie and he threw 28 INT his rookie year. Im not saying some day Desmond might turn out to be the MVP of NL but hes just a rookie. I firmly believe that putting him through the fire will either bring out the best of him OR he will fade away to become a journeyman. As for Guzman he can hit, I never crucified him for anything but he lacks range and is at the last round of his career. We need to see what we got with Desmond instead of sending him down to AAA. If he doesnt work out swallow your mistake and move on to the other youngster Espinosa.
Heyward is injured (that's why he went on the DL) and has been since his slump. He was leading the league in OPS before the injury. Not to say Desmond isn't a promising prospect or doesn't have injury, or other problems of his own, but Heyward was raking until the bone bruise on his thumb and opted to play through it unsuccessfully, which dropped 50 points on his average (.301 to .251 in a month)
I did not know that Heyward was playing through the pain but still look at his numbers before that. Towards the end of April the kid was in a slump and ended up batting .240 after a hot start. Then May he went back on fire batting .337 and then from June 1 to the 7th he dropped his batting average by about 20 points before suffereing the injury and going down another 20 points. So all I am saying is lets take a wait and see approach with Desmond. He can only get better from here.
