Back when Rougned Odor could hit.

This is not a hate on Roogie piece. So, as you read on, don’t ball your fists in anger and brand me an Odor hater. I am not. I am Odornostic.

This is an honest suggestion on how Rougned Odor can get out of his deep funk. It’s the true story of how one of the key players on the greatest team of all time got himself out of the prolonged slump he was in.

This is science. And you can’t argue with that.

Make no mistake, Rougned Odor is in it bad. Yes, he’s collected a few hits in the past few games but he has a long way to go. He’s still hitting just .141. He’s still getting on base a paltry twenty-two percent of the time. He has only twelve hits this season. Cody Bellinger gets twelve a week.

How bad is it? Remember the plight of former Ranger Chris Davis? It seemed like he went a decade without a hit. He went sixty-two consecutive plate appearances, in fact, without hitting safely, spanning the end of last season and the beginning of this one. He began this season 0-for-33. It was historic futility. He broke out of it with a three-hit game.

As historically miserable as Chris Davis’s season has been, he is now batting .179. That’s thirty-eight points better than Odor. If he had enough at-bats to qualify, Odor would be dead last in batting average.

Davis also set the record for lowest batting average from a position player last season. It was .168. Odor dreams of those lofty numbers.

But there is hope. You have to go back to the Big Red Machine, the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, a team that would win its second-consecutive World Series. On this day in baseball history, Reds legendary shortstop Dave Concepcion was in a deep slump. He was batting just .157. (Rougned Odor pines for the days of .157.) He tried everything to get hot. Changed his batting stance. Tried different locations in the box. Choked up. Lit candles. Nothing worked.

Desperate to shake out of his slump, Concepcion did what only someone truly trying to get hot would do. He climbed into the clubhouse dryer at Wrigley Field and asked his teammates to turn it on. They complied. They let Concepcion take a few tumbles. It did the trick. He heated up. Literally and figuratively. The Reds shortstop went 3-for-6 that day, and ended up batting .304 for the remaining 129 games of the season.

Concepcion, by the way, weighed only one hundred fifty-five pounds. Odor weighs one-ninety-five. Fortunately, modern dryers have much bigger capacities.

Look, desperate times call for desperate measures. Concepcion was by most accounts a Hall-of-Fame-calibre infielder. Odor could learn from his fellow Venezuelan.

Who knows, maybe if they throw him in the washing machine before as well, they can get some of that Odor out as well. It works for my socks.

*****
TODAY’S GAME:

Mike Minor (3-2, 2.40) vs. Wade Miley (2-2, 3.20)
Game time: 7:10