What's wrong with Jake Cronenworth?

Where has Jake Cronenworth's offense gone? A look at the numbers appears to show an issue with his swing, not with how he's being pitched.

The Padres lost yesterday. It happens, they’re going to lose sometimes. Blake Snell looked rusty but good, Nick Martinez looked like a weapon out of the bullpen, and the offense fell flat.

The offense is going to have these days as long as more than one of their regular starters is hitting like crap. We’ve already talked about Trent Grisham’s struggles at the plate, I’m sure we’ll talk about Austin Nola at some point, but the most important guy that isn’t hitting for the Padres right now has to be Jake Cronenworth.

Crone finished 2nd in Rookie of the Year voting in 2020 and made the NL All-Star team in 2021. There was no reason to believe that he was about to fall off a cliff, but that’s what he’s done so far. His ~.800 OPS and ~120 OPS+ seems like a distant memory, as he’s nowhere near that player so far in 2022.

I talked at the end of yesterday’s post about how Cronenworth is not actually “heating up”, despite what some people are saying, and here are the numbers to back that up:

I hate every part of that.

So, what’s wrong with Crone? Well, I’ll see if I can figure it out.