159 PA can be a slump, but if that were the case I'd expect to see his rate stats down. But he's hitting 41% of his balls hard and yet has absolutely nothing to show for it after two months. A slump is one thing, but this isn't a slump. It's more than just mere bad luck. There's something else at work here, which is why scouting still has a role to play in the modern game.
EDIT: I saw a brief clip a little while ago where he had a whole bunch of flyouts to the warning track and his swing had a noticeable uppercut. If he's trying to drive the ball out of the park and doesn't have the strength/contact to do so, I'd venture a guess that could be part of the issue.
I think if we want to attribute Verdugo's struggles relative to his rate stats to a specific deficiency, we should try to see if we can figure out what the problem is. In my thinking, there are two things we should then try to address:
1. Verdugo's underperformance in regards to his past: Verdugo's results have been at odds relative to his underlying rate stats (barrel%, hard hit rate, K%) and notably this is a new phenomenon for him (if you look at
Fangraphs page for him you will see that this year his wOBA is .252 and his xwOBA is 350---the former being the lowest and the latter being the highest of his career). So if there is something that he is doing that is causing this gap---what has changed this year compared to last? He's hitting fewer line drives and more fly balls than in the past which could, in combination with a deadened ball, result in more of those warning track fly outs you mentioned. I don't know if the difference between this year and years past is enough to account for his changes in wOBA but its at least a possibility. Has the uppercut in his swing increased this year as compared to last? Are there other mechanical changes?
2. Verdugo's underperformance relative to his peers: as noted above, his xwOBA is much higher than his wOBA. I looked through a discussing the relationship between wOBA and xwOBA and it noted that in general, xwOBA and wOBA are pretty closely related and with a relatively normal bell curve distribution, so that that the standard deviation is around plus/minus 0.02 points of wOBA. That means that on average, 95% of players will have their wOBA be within 2 standard deviations (i.e. 0.04-0.045) point of wOBA.
Verdugo's difference is 0.1 That's a lot. The article also then looks at types of hitters that tend to underperform their xwOBA---again, this has not been an issue for Verdugo in the past, so the comparison may not be as useful, but it may point us to a reason why he is underperforming by so much. Two factors that seem to cause p[layers to underperform their xwOBA are slow speed and batted ball profiles that suppress BABIP (such as lots of pulled groundballs into the shift). Verdugo's no9t someone I think of as being very fast, but he's also not super slow. Is he pulling a lot of groundballs into the shift? His GB% doesn't seem particularly high. I'm sure there is a place that would list his pulled GB% for the year but I'm not sure where to look for it.
So overall, if we're looking for something other than bad luck to account for his underperforming relative to his expected outcomes, we should be looking for something that is a. new to him for this year and b. makes him an outlier relative to his peers. I understand that it seems like there should be something that is causing him to struggle but if we can't really point to a likely cause then....I don't see how we can say that it isn't just bad luck.