FU-KU-DO-ME

At the risk of "talking during the no-hitter," as it were, remember how crazy we went for Kosuke Fukudome in the first months of the '08 season? Especially right at the start when he came flying out of the gate. Fukudome's stats through the first ten games of 2008:

.333/.447/.487, .934 OPS, 3 2B, 1 HR, 6 RBI, 8/7 BB/K

(And that's bearing in mind that in games 9 and 10 he went a combined o-for-8.)

Of course, we all know what happened next. Over the course of the year, Fukudome's numbers kept dropping; in the second half he went just .217/.314/.326, and in the final two months he hit under .200, getting so bad that he only started 9 games in September.

Coming into this season I said the following:

"[W]hat to expect out of Fukudome is entirely unclear; watching him bat in the second half of last year was pretty depressing given how great he looked the first couple of months. Like most Cubs fans, I still desperately want the guy to hit, and at least he can take a walk now and again (leading the team last year with 81), but the days of thinking he could pop 20 homers out of Wrigley and go for a .400 OBP like last year's PECOTA projected are long gone. (For the record, this year's PECOTA pegs Kosuke at .386, which still seems awfully optimistic. But hey, Hideki Matsui improved in his second year in America.)"

Well, Fukudome may yet turn out to just be a first-half player. There aren't too many of those in the majors that I'm aware of - Alex Rodriguez, despite his reputation, has virtually identical career numbers before and after the break, and while Dave Winfield (once pejoratively described as "Mr. May" by George Steinbrenner) does have better career first half stats, they're nothing along the lines of Fukudome's 2008 dropoff. But the guy has only been in the majors for one year. While a quick check of my copy of BP '09 reveals that the Japanese season is not shorter than the US version - Fukudome had 578 PAs in 2006, compared to 590 with the Cubs last year - it's clearly less strenuous. Every game is indoors in nearly identical stadia, the degree of travel is significantly less (Japan quite obviously has nothing like flying to the West Coast and back within a week), and of course the level of competition isn't exactly identical.

My speculation has been that Fukudome's initial success had to do with him not being a known quantity - you see guys come up and rake all the time because pitchers don't necessarily know how to pitch them yet. Eventually the league caught up with Fukudome, and he had trouble making adjustments, instead overdramatizing his infamous bailout swing and turning into a corkscrew as a result. Come the offseason, it was up to Fukudome to make his own adjustments or risk becoming one of MLB's most expensive pine jockeys.

Well, it's early. But given that pitchers supposedly know how to pitch Fukudome now, maybe he's actually figured it out? Sure, he could just be a first-half guy, but on the other hand, maybe he'll be more adjusted to the rigors of MLB this year and be able to maintain his form. He probably won't do what he's doing in the first ten games all season - small sample sizes and all that. But given the bang with which he exploded onto the scene last year, would you believe his first ten games this year aren't just better, but significantly better?

.371/.477/.771, 1.249 OPS, 5 2B, 3 HR, 9 RBI, 8/6 BB/K

Yeah, he won't do that all year. A .771 slugging percentage would be the seventh-greatest year of all time, trailing only three seasons of Bonds and three seasons of Ruth. More likely than not he won't even turn in a .300/.400/.500, and he probably isn't going to hit 48 home runs and knock in 144. Ten days of stats really doesn't tell you much of anything, all told. (Milton Bradley probably won't hit .056 all year, either.)

But with that said, I think - I hope - that his start to this year being even faster than his start to last year says something about the steps forward he's taken as a player. Because if he falls off the table again, Jim Edmonds and Mark DeRosa won't be there with surprising seasons to pick up the slack, and even if Bradley can stay healthy he'll probably only give you what we were hoping from Kosuke in '08 in the first place. This team needs a .300/.400/.450-like line from Kosuke, with 15-20 homers and maybe 70-80 driven in. Only time will tell if he truly has the ability or if he just really loves hitting in April.