It's only eight months since the Angels turned him into the third $25-million-a-year position player in baseball history.

It's only 15 months since he sent four breathtaking home run balls floating through the Baltimore sky on a single, magical night.

It's only five years since he turned an evening at the Home Run Derby into his own personal fairy tale.

So no wonder we find ourselves asking these days: What the heck happened to Josh Hamilton?

" I still believe in Josh's physical ability. I still believe in the player. " -- Angels GM Jerry Dipoto

He hasn't just taken a journey from Texas to Anaheim. He has taken a journey from superhero to .234 hitter. And when you ask people around baseball how that could be possible, they say things like: "I don't know, man. It's the mystery of the ages."

But you don't need to be a descendant of Agatha Christie to know it's a mystery, all right.

It's a mystery when a man with Josh Hamilton's massive power can own a lower slugging percentage (.419) than James Loney.

It's a mystery when a man with Josh Hamilton's prodigious offensive skill set can have a lower OPS (.713) than Brian Dozier.

It's a mystery when a man earning twice as much as the Astros' entire roster could find himself batting seventh in his lineup on back-to-back nights -- which actually transpired, honest to goodness, in late June.

So we set out this week to answer that question: What the heck happened to Josh Hamilton?

We spoke with his general manager, Jerry Dipoto, a man who said, firmly: "I still believe in Josh's physical ability. I still believe in the player. … And we've seen signs, over the last three weeks [as Hamilton has put up a .329/.414/.539 slash line over a 19-game stretch], that he's getting back to doing the things that Josh Hamilton does."

But we also spoke with executives, scouts and others inside the game who have known this man for years. And what we learned is what we'd suspected:

There's much more here than meets the eye -- or the stat sheet.

What happened to his swing?

He still bounces on his heels in the batter's box, his wavy hair popping out of his batting helmet, his bat draped over his shoulder, his wrists flexed, his eyes fixed. But that's about the only part of Hamilton's offensive repertoire that looks the same.

It's when he swings that bat that things begin to look incredibly un-Josh-like. Just compare last year's results with this year's. This is what you'll find:

The average distance of every fly ball he hits has dropped by more than 26 feet, according to Fangraphs -- from 299.8 feet to 273.4. … His Isolated Power (which measures power by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage) has plummeted by more than 100 points -- from .292 to .185 overall -- and is way down both at home and on the road. … His percentage of "hard-hit balls" has taken a steep dive, according to Inside Edge, from 34 percent to 22 percent.

Hamilton is on pace to hit 23 homers, drive in 74 runs and strike out 162 times this season. AP Photo/ Bill Nichols

Get the picture? That's what the numbers say. The eyeballs concur.

"I saw him last year when he was on fire, and it was nuts," said one AL scout. "Everything he hit was just barreled. And it jumped. … Now it's just not the same coming off the bat. It's the same approach. But it's not jumping the way it did."

"He doesn't drive the ball like he used to," said another AL exec. "He doesn't drive the ball from left-center field to the right-field foul pole like he always did. He just doesn't seem to have that ability anymore."

Yet another AL exec thought back to the electrifying night when everything changed for this man: Home Run Derby, Yankee Stadium, July 14, 2008.

"Nobody ever froze a Home Run Derby like Josh Hamilton did," the exec said, with the kind of emotion you rarely hear in the voice of men like this when they discuss events like the Derby. "Hitting balls that almost left Yankee Stadium? Are you kidding? He was just so much better than anybody else. But he's not the same guy right now."

So what happened to that guy? One theme that kept coming up was how much "skinnier" he is now. And it's possible that's all the Juice Lady's fault.

A year ago, he played at a weight that fluctuated at between 240 and 250 pounds. He's played most of this year, from what we've gleaned, at a weight somewhere in the range of 30 pounds lighter than that, thanks to a new gluten-free diet dominated by fruit and vegetable juices, which he says he learned about watching the Juice Lady on late-night TV.

That diet hasn't been a big topic of media conversation since spring training. But it sure is a topic among scouts and executives who have been watching this guy and wondering why he looks the way he looks these days and hits the way he hits.

"When you look at him, you can see he's still physically strong," said one AL exec. "He's still a very imposing figure. But there's a lot less of him than there was a couple of years ago."

(WE INTERRUPT THIS DISCUSSION TO ADDRESS THE CONSPIRACY-THEORY CROWD: Before we go on, we should mention right here that NO ONE we talked to believes Josh Hamilton is a PED guy. He had a serious "recreational" drug problem once upon a time. That's exhaustively documented. But people who know him well assured us that, as a recovering addict who is tested constantly, he's about as unlikely a candidate to take the PED road as any player alive. Do we know for sure about anyone? Of course not. But we sincerely believe that isn't the case here. You can now resume firing the usual slop against the wall if you'd like. But not us.)

But this whole diet/Juice Lady/power-loss thing is far from Hamilton's only serious offensive issue. There's also this:

It sometimes seems as if this guy takes a hack at everything, from breaking balls in the dirt to Airbuses whooshing by him at 30,000 feet.

Here are the terrifying facts on that front, courtesy of TruMedia:

So far this season, he has swung at 439 pitches that were NOT in the strike zone -- the third-most in the big leagues, behind only Pablo Sandoval (473) and Adam Jones (443). Let's just say that hasn't worked out so hot.

The data shows that Hamilton is hitting .141 when he does that, with -- ready for this? -- 90 strikeouts, 26 hits and only five extra-base hits (three doubles and two homers). So why, asked one scout, "would you ever throw the guy a strike?"