Los Angeles Dodgers utility man Chris Taylor entered the 2018 season looking to replicate the success he enjoyed as part of a breakout year on both sides of the ball in 2017.
But he struggled out of the gate and found himself hitting a weak .232/.271/.424 in 133 plate appearances at the end of April. That’s despite accumulating eight doubles, two triples, four home runs and 10 RBI over the first four weeks of play.
More concerning was Taylor’s strikeout-to-walk ratio of 33-7, which evidently attributed to his early season woes. But the 27-year-old has since enjoyed a resurgent month of May while cutting back on strikeouts, which he credits for feeling more comfortable at the plate.
In the wake of his newfound success, Taylor hopes to find and maintain a consistent approach at the plate, via Rowan Kavner of Dodger Insider:
“It’s just been kind of more peaks and valleys than I want to,” Taylor said. “It’s just trying to find that consistent feeling where I can take that same approach up there and have confidence and trust in my swing where it’s there and I don’t have to try to do anything more.”
As the month of May dwindles down, Taylor has seemingly begun displaying the same on-base skills that led to his successful 2017 season. Across 85 trips to the plate, he is batting .258/.424/.439 with six extra-base hits and 14 walks.
To get him going at the plate, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts relieved Taylor of leadoff duties at the beginning of the month and dropped him to the bottom half of the order. Though, Taylor returned to the top of the lineup on Wednesday against the Colorado Rockies and reached base in three of his four plate appearances.
Roberts called it “imperative” that Taylor snap out of his funk for the Dodgers to make a comeback in the standings.
Not coincidentally, Los Angeles has played better baseball as of late and find themselves only 3.5 games behind the first-place Rockies in the National League West.
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