Jason Heyward’s Lost Season

The Atlanta Braves do not seem to be taking the kind of heat for their September collapse that the Boston Red Sox are taking, but it was just as bad. For fans, it was head scratching because they should have been a juggernaut right through the season. But a sub-par season from Dan Uggla didn’t help after the high expectations there. What few realize is that Jason Heyward was worse…much worse than Dan Uggla. Heyward’s collapse is notable when you think back to the start of 2010 when he was the talk of baseball. He was the next big thing. He made the All Star team his rookie season. He was going to be a super star. So what happened?

The obvious fact is that he hurt his shoulder and the balky wing joint totally messed up his mechanics. There were whispers on Twitter that he had developed into the worse swing in baseball. His final 2011 slash line of .222/.319/.389 doesn’t come close to showing how badly his season went. To get the total picture, you have to dig deeper into the numbers. [The Flagrant Fan]