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No, it's not a bad year, but for someone who looked to be the next superstar, and his financial comments this past spring training indicate he thought he could be paid as an elite player. So his offensive number are fair, but not great. But the two bigs differences between an everday player and a superstar is 1) carrying the team at some point and 2) making up for lack of run production with other contributions (ie, scoring runs by taking the base, playing good defense, moving runners up, not attacking your teammates). He's 0 for 4 on all accounts, with a mild increase in walks but I suspect (and someone may have the numbers) that for the number of times he's "pitched around" he doesn't actually draw the number of walks you would expect. He's playing awfully in the field. He seems (as was pointed out before) to pull a lot of grounders to 2nd which doesn't advance runners. He attacked Manny Parra in the dugout.

So while D. Lee, A. Jones may be able to make up for the lack of traditional production, Fielder is not, and that is why he is being singled out. I don't think it's unfair or inappropriate. Ryan Braun has had a mini-slump, but he carried our offense for a few stretches. He hasn't been a glaring deficit in the outfield. He will steal some bases, draw some walks.