It doesn't feel like all that long ago that Pablo Sandoval was wreaking havoc throughout the National League East off of the bench for the Atlanta Braves. The 34-year-old veteran kicked off the 2021 campaign, his 14th in the majors, with a clutch, game-tying pinch-hit home run in the seventh inning against the Phillies. Five games later, Sandoval had hit another pinch-hit two-run home run in the seventh inning that broke a 0-0 stalemate between the Braves and the Nationals, one that would ultimately be the only scoring in the game. And just around a week after that blast, Kung Fu Panda struck again, belting a pinch-hit, three-run home run to put the Braves on top of the Marlins in the sixth. In early May, the Phillies were the victim of another insanely clutch Sandoval home run, a pinch-hit bomb with two outs in the bottom of the ninth that tied the game.
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Social media was in a frenzy. Sandoval had come out of nowhere to lead the bench unit of a should-be playoff team and hopefully return to his days of postseason glory he saw throughout his San Francisco Giants stint. It was clutch home run after clutch home run after clutch home run. It was panda-monium, if you will. Here's a compilation of those four dingers so that you remember the good times, because — spoiler alert — they didn't last for long (via MLB Film Room).
The last of those towering shots came on May 8, at which point Sandoval was slashing .290/.389/.677 in 36 plate appearances. He cooled off a little bit going forward, though a three-hit game on May 25 made it so that the rest of the month wasn't completely devoid of production. That's when June hit, and boy, has it been a struggle since then.
In 30 pinch-hit opportunities since the start of June, including one on Monday night against the Mets, Sandoval has one hit. A single hit, giving him a batting average of .040 in that span. He's gotten on base five other times via walks or HBP, but it hasn't been pretty. Eight strikeouts and just one hit? That's not a combination of stats you ever really want to see, whether you're an everyday starter, a pinch-hitter or, heck, even a pitcher.
The last time that a player has had one or fewer hits in a 30-game span with at least 20 plate appearances in a single season was in 2015, when Peter Bourjos, then of the Cardinals, had a single base knock in 39 plate appearances across as many games. In 2014, John McDonald had zero hits in 30 straight plate appearances over a 36-game span, some of which he entered only as a pinch runner (via Stathead). Of course, if you want to combine seasons, you can point to Chris Davis, who ended 2018 without a hit in 24 straight plate appearances, then started 2019 without a hit in 38 straight plate appearances, giving him a 62-PA hitless streak between two seasons. Yikes.
Whichever way you spin it, it's not the best look for Sandoval and the Braves, who are trying to hang on in the NL East with their 49-51 record, just behind both the Mets (53-45) and the Phillies (50-49).
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