When the Phillies came to town to play the Giants earlier this season, I caught up with Philadelphia left fielder Pat Burrell, who went to SLV High for a year before transferring to Bellarmine Prep in San Jose.
At the time, he was off to a slow start batting in the fifth spot behind reigning NL MVP Ryan Howard. Howard was in an early season slump of his own, and Burrell talked about how important it was to the Phillies’ offense that he hit well behind Howard to force opposing pitches to throw strikes to the big lefty.
After some injury problems, Howard eventually snapped out of his funk. However, Burrell did not, and he was dropped from down in the order. His slow start became a slow first half, and he went into the All-Star break batting .215/.378/.408 with 11 homers. ESPN.com’s Jason Stark named Burrell the NL’s Least Valuable Player for the first half of the season.
But Burrell bounced back. He’s turned it around since the break, raising his batting average to .267 while ranking 11th in the majors in OBP at .409. That’s been a huge contribution to the Phillies offense, which currently currently ranks first in the NL in runs scored. Burrell is up to 20 homers on the year, and while power is down a bit from a few years ago , and is 4th in the league in walks with 86.
His ability to work the count may be the most important part of this turnaround. For the first time in his career, Burrell is walking at the same rate as he is striking out. He’s only struck out 92 times this year, a huge improvement for a guy who has twice struck out 160 times in a season in his career.
When I talked with Burrell in May, he told me he hadn’t really changed his approach at the plate and he was as baffled as anybody as to while he was getting so many free passes. How does that happen? He must be doing something, because you just don’t stop striking out like that. Whatever it is, it’s working, because he’s now one of the toughest outs in the National League.
