Obviously there's no right answer. Maybe it was a little of both. Taking it to another level, did his numbers decrease because of the injury, regression to - and past - the mean or are his skills deteriorating before our eyes? It happens to all ballplayers. It doesn't appear to have affected Brandon in the field - and that's a good sign because that is usually where you see it first.
I think the Reds aren't going to do a heckuva lot better than Brandon at 2nd for the next few years. It's not exactly like we have a Matt Carpenter ready to take over. He may not have a sexy OBP but is the next guy going to do much better and he's not likely to be as good in the field as Brandon. Perhaps Brandon should serve as a lesson to the front office to not give out those kind of contracts if you think you want to dump them in a year or two.