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One item I would throw into the hopper is the "slow start" reality.
There are absolutely some players who take a while to get going, and this becomes a recurring pattern (self fulfilling prophecy?).
But, MLB *as a whole* generates lower offensive totals in April routinely. Typically, July and August are the "big bop" months. But, it's not an absolute. There are some years that don't show much skew from month to month, (2013 is actually one of them). But, when their is a BIG skew, it is almost always with early season offense suppressed and hot month offense spiking.
I suspect a large part of this is weather. It's "literally" the players (and balls ... and air) getting hotter. But, some of it is almost certainly getting back into a groove. That whole pattern recognition thing ... players come back after 6 months off and *some* will take longer than others to stop thinking so much.
My own view of Kendrys was always that 2009 was a like career year that was not his "true" profile. While the 34 HRs can easily be an abberation, (especially after getting only 9 in hits first 100 games in the bigs) ... the "tell" for me that Morales' power was WAY above Ichiro's was the double total. He got 34 HRs *AND* 43 doubles. Even if '09 is an outlier, there is simply too much pop required to hit 79 XBHs for it to completely vanish (without something like a back injury). He pretty much always looked like an .830 (ish) hitter to me, (the same way Morse has always looked more like a .770 guy).