Curious about why Willie the DH and Willingham in the field, unless Riggs thinks he'll PH Morse for Harris as soon as a lefty is brought in.
Willie has had a ridiculously bad stretch of plate appearances after the first 3 weeks of the season. PER the B-R game logs, first 16 games, through 4/23 and 42 plate appearances, his OPS was .810. Since then, in 69 PAs, his OBP is .217 and SLG is .270. While the past few years, he's been effective against righties, he's been playing almost exclusively against RHP in that time. From 2007-09, plus the start of the year, his OBP against RHP had not been below .350 and his SLG had not been below .400.
The thing is, it is not just a bad luck streak where balls that should drop in don't. What is down this year is his line drive rate (from his fangraphs page), going from from 15 - 20% the past few years to 10% which is one indication of bad contact, and his groundballs are seem to be dribblers (not going for hits, but weak contact). He is getting fooled, too. He is swinging more at balls outside the strike zone, making more contact outside the strike zone, which yields dribblers. He's also missing balls in the strike zone.
I wonder if Eckstein has picked something up. Hint Ben or Neumie - that's a good conversation for you to have with Eckstein.