Published by
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
By Tom Verducci The 23-year-old hitting genius is having his worst season yet. What in the name of Ted Williams is going on? Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical story to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers. The baseball world is full of statistical anomalies. Paul Goldschmidt is slugging .687 against sliders. Max Muncy is hitting .147 against fastballs. Shohei Ohtani has bumped the velocity on his fastball by 2.6 mph. Martín Pérez has thrown 464 consecutive sinkers without allowing a home run since last September….