In the years that you - my fellow RZone posters - have watched major league baseball how many players do you recall taking such a drastic nosedive from their peak?
24 months ago Suarez was on the cusp of hitting his 50th homerun with a very respectable .271 BAVG.
Skip to present day and the same Suarez has hit 1/2 that many homeruns and his BAVG is on the cusp of dropping into the .160's.
I've seen a lot of baseball in my day, I'm not sure I can name anyone else who was a healthy non-Roider, whose career collapsed so quickly. To make matters worse it's come during the middle of his peak years (25-32).
Back in March of 2018 when he signed a 7 year - 66M$ contract, who among us thought that deal would look so ugly so quickly? He's still owed 35M$ for the 2022, 2023, and 2024 seasons. It's not as if he took the money and quit trying - his best two seasons were after the extension.
You could make a very valid argument that he doesn't just deserve to be benched, he deserves to be outright released.
If you have any belief in advanced metrics, he's gone from a positive 4 WAR player to a negative 2 WAR player in less than 2 years and he's just had his 30th birthday.
I don't think it's that big of a stretch to say that a lot of players down in AAA could hit .170 over a year in the bigs, at least a large group of them could better the .553 OPS he's currently sporting against southpaws.
Is the gutpunch of his collapse any worse considering their other 3Bman - the soon to be 33 year old Moose - is still owed 38M$ over the next two seasons? A player, who in his own right, looks like he should be benched.