8 Kendrys Morales, DH

Mariners designated hitter Kendrys Morales hit his fourth home run of the season Sunday against the Athletics.

It didn't take the Mariners long to get ahead of Tommy Milone. After a leadoff single, Kyle Seager walked, paving the way for Morales. Morales hit a ball out to left field on the third pitch he saw from Milone. It was his only hit of the game. Morales is hitting .262/.351/.415 in 130 at-bats. 

Mariners manager Eric Wedge made a change to his lineup Sunday against the Athletics, moving Kyle Seager into the third spot in the batting order. Wedge made the move to alleviate some of the pressure felt by Kendrys Morales and Michael Morse, who moved down to fourth and fifth in the lineup, respectively.

"I’m playing around with it a little bit," Wedge said, per MLB.com. "I still stand by the fact that Morales and Morse are just trying to do too much. They know they’re the guys here and I think with that sometimes you put a little too much pressure on yourself to do too much. You see both of them chasing more than they should."

Morales is batting .333 (10 for 30) in his last eight games, but he hasn't homered in 14 games and is slugging a disappointing .397.

"Kendrys is so good, the on-base percentage, he’s going to hit," Wedge said. "He’s going to be fine in the end. But ultimately we need to be able to count on him every day."

With Seattle opening a two-game interleague series at Pittsburgh, Mariners designated hitter Kendrys Morales was held out of the lineup Tuesday. Morales has spent the majority of his playing time as the DH this season, but has notched just three home runs in 32 games.

Mariners DH Kendrys Morales has managed a disappointing three home runs and a .393 slugging percentage through his first 31 games. His poor power numbers have forced his Fantasy ownership to sink to 81 percent. 

So what gives? Well, starting off Morales appears to be more selective at the outset of the season. He's swung at just a career-low 27.6 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, which is below his career rate (33.2 percent), per FanGraphs.com. He also nearly has as many walks (13) as strikeouts (19), which isn't the norm for Morales. It's a bit odd to see this from Morales since he had no problems swinging away this spring, when he hit seven home runs in 19 spring games. 

Morales' ISO -- which is a measure of a hitter's raw power -- is at .134, which is well below his career .206 mark. He also has just a 10 percent home run to fly ball ratio, which is well below what he did in 2012 (21 percent) and below his career average (16.5 percent). 

All signs point to Morales likely to trend back toward the norm at some point, so if you can afford to be patient, then the rewards could be great down the road. If I'm a Kendrys Morales owner, then there's no way I'm dropping him onto waivers.