ATLANTA — Alex Bregman has been struggling at the plate for a while and he’s been especially tough in the World Sequence in opposition to the Braves. With the Astros‘ backs in opposition to the wall — facing a 3-1 deficit heading into Sunday night’s Sport 5 — manager Dusty Baker made up our minds to drop Bregman in the narrate, from his primitive self-discipline in the three hole down to seventh. Carlos Correa jumps as a lot as Third and Yuli Gurriel moves to fifth as they proceed to alternate righties and lefties.
“Like all my players, I contain a discussion with them earlier than making a circulate and telling him why and improve to him that he’s now not the scapegoat here, that there is just a few guys struggling in our lineup,” Baker acknowledged Sunday. “He’s needed and the guys which would be swinging earlier than him are swinging better, especially on this National League park. They’re pitching around [Yordan] Alvarez, you may perchance perchance expose and they also’re additionally the truth is pitching around Yuli. So I moved Yuli up as a result of Yuli became swinging better.”
“He understood,” Baker persisted. “He went out and took extra [batting practice] and merely making an strive to assemble his stroke. He’s a crew man. There’s no bid with him transferring. Here is optimistically a non permanent bid unless we come again home and obtain our fleshy compliment in the lineup together with the DH.”
Bregman is merely 1 for 14 in the World Sequence in opposition to Atlanta and the one hit became a historical grounder that chanced on a hole in the shift in the ninth inning in Sport 3. He’s struck out 5 times and an extraordinarily good deal of the time he’s barely even having a competitive at-bat. He easiest hit .217/.308/.348 in the ALCS. He hit smartly in the four-game ALDS, but he executed the frequent season in a trot, hitting .113/.238/.226 in his final 14 video games.
Bregman executed sixth in MVP voting in 2018 and 2nd in 2019, but in 133 video games since then, he’s hit .261/.353/.431 (114 OPS+) with 18 homers. He’s merely now not been the identical man since 2019.
