I hope Rolen can get back to his old self.

We could be witnessing the worst season of 3B Scott Rolen’s career. The 37-year-old was hurt last season and played in just 65 games. After a good spring training, he said that he felt better than ever. How he feels isn’t what matters though.

Rolen has played in all 17 games this season and, for lack of a better description, has not hit the ball. Out of his 61 plate appearances (57 ABs), he has ten hits. This guy was an All-Star last year and is hitting .175. It’s still only 17 games into the season, I know, but he doesn’t look like he can turn on a fastball. He may feel fine, but when his bat is swinging through the air, it can’t catch up. Situationally, he has been absolutely awful. He’s created 3 runs this year, which puts him on pace to roughly match his 28 runs created (remember, in 65 games) last season.

And Rolen has taken a step back in the field, too.  The only statistic I care about for fielding is errors. Rolen has two errors on the season, which puts him on pace to commit his second most amount of errors in his career. In his second full season in the league, he committed 24 errors. I don’t want to go back to that.

I know that it’s early. Rolen is a seasoned veteran and doesn’t get discouraged like a young guy might when he’s playing poorly. Nothing seems to be changing though and I wonder how long he’ll stay an every day guy if it keeps going like this.

We could be witnessing the worst season of Rolen’s career. I hope I’m wrong though.