Houston Astros: Three most disappointing players from the 2018 season
By T.A. Mock
Josh Reddick, OF
Prior to the 2017 season, the Houston Astros inked Josh Reddick to a four-year, $52 million deal to come in and shore up the outfield. This, in all honesty, was a very large, unexpected contract for the Astros and the player.
Reddick has had a very solid career for several organizations but he was coming off an injury-shortened season where he saw his stock plummet after he was traded to the Dodgers at the deadline. This seemed like a team grasping for straws and overpaying to get slightly better.
However, Reddick played out of his mind for the Astros in 2017 and made them look like geniuses while the rest of the league looked like fools for overlooking him. He set career highs in several categories while rivaling others. Namely, Reddick blew his previous high for average out of the water by posting a .314 batting average.
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His incredible production was one of the reasons why the Astros had a truly historic offense in 2017, an offense that carried them through the playoffs en route to a World Series title. This may be one of the reasons why his 2018 production was so disappointing. He suffered mightily throughout the year, his game wasn’t the same and the offense wasn’t the same.
His 2017 was such an outlier that a regression to the mean was to be expected. However, 2018 was more than just a regression to the mean, it was a complete plummet into an offensive black hole and contract that once again looks to be doling out more than it should.
The only area where he improved from 2017 to 2018 was in his home runs. However, he only managed almost half of the RBIs that he had in 2017. Reddick has a lot of money on the books for the next two seasons. The Astros now need to be hoping for a regression to the mean in the other direction in order for this to turn into even more of a disappointment.