Peter Alonso has been mashing up a storm for the Mets. Will it continue? Adam Eaton has been solid. Enrique Hernandez just hasn’t been anything special. Eloy Jimenez is blasting away, and all of a sudden people remember he’s an elite end hitting prospect. Yoan Moncada has swing and miss in his game, but the counting categories are impressive. Max Muncy was great last season, and he’s been really, really good this season. Shohei Ohtani has hit his stride the last two weeks. Joc Pederson is great, but he isn’t. Victor Robles has some pop, and some speed, but the rest of his game is spotty. Not so much for Juan Soto who is killing it. Chris Taylor is gonna see an uptick in playing time for the Dodgers. Finally, Justin Upton is just about ready to return to action.
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HITTING
Peter Alonso has a monster 22 homers and .596 SLG with a .342 ISO mark. The power has been on display, and it’s immense. He should/will continue to display those prodigious talents. Alonso hits the ball really hard, no doubt about that, but a 31 percent HR/FB ratio is a bit high for my liking, especially when you consider that his launch angle of 13.4 percent isn’t exactly a high number. Concerns about the batting average follow. Alonso has a 0.31 BB/K ratio which is below the league average. He has hit .222 at home. He has hit .237 against righties. Further, in all scenarios, since May 1st, Alonso has hit a mere .224 (wish a sub-par .300 OBP). The power is legit. The concerns about him being able to hit .260 are also legitimate. Just know who he is and you should be fine.
Adam Eaton has been healthy, for once. He’s hitting a passable .274, and though his OBP of .357 also works, the mark was .394 the past two seasons so his current rate is a bit disappointing. He’s far from sexy, and if you don’t look closely, you can miss him. Still, a .275-15-40-90-10 pace ain’t bad, though it’s certainly not what I would hope for if he were to play 155 games.
Enrique Hernandez mashes Madison Bumgarner, and he hit 21 homers last season. Still, I was astounded that there was so much attention paid to him this preseason, and said so repeatedly. He’s on pace to surpass the 21 homers and 52 RBI he had last season, he’s up to 10 and 33, but his overall game has been, as anticipated by this scribe, middling. Kike has a terrible slash line of .215/.282/.393, not even sniffing the league average. He also has a subpar .285 wOBA and a 79 wRC+. I still get questions about him from time to time, and I’m not really sure why?
Eloy Jimenez is all of a sudden blasting majestic home runs. Over his last 11 outings Eloy has a .333/.381/.667 slash line with three homers, four doubles and eight RBI. “I think he’s adjusting; he’s learning, he’s continuing to see what guys are trying to do to him,” said manager Rick Renteria. “He’s laying off some tough pitches. … He’s going to be pretty good besides the long ball. He put some pretty good swings on pitches. He’s going to be all right.” I agree. It’s been amazing to me how many folks had moved on from Eloy, or were at the very least getting ready to. An elite talent, Eloy is finding his footing.
Yoan Moncada is currently dealing with a minor back strain according to reports. He’s on pace to have a flat-out amazing season with a current pace of .295-30-95-90-10. That would be an epic season, would it not? Can he keep up that pace? It seems unlikely. Here’s why. Moncada has hit just .246 against lefties. After hitting .314 in April he went .254 in May. More concerning than the batting average, is the strikeout rate. In April his BB/K was 0.35 before it dipped to 0.16 in May. That’s sent his K-rate went from 23 to 35 percent. Overall the K-rate is 28 percent which is a four points improvement on his career rate, but the dip in May is concerning. Hard to see him having any shot of keeping his average as high as it is, there’s also a .378 BABIP to contend with, but his counting category production should continue along at borderline impressive levels. Still could be slumps a coming though.
That’s some serious length.
Max Muncy came out of nowhere last season to post a massive .973 OPS with 35 homers. He’s slowed a bit this season, but 15 homers and a .908 OPS is still a massive level of production. The exit velocity is down a mile and a half, the launch angle us down 2.5 percent, and the hard-hit rate is down seven percent. There’s likely further slowing down coming IMO. Nothing major mind you, and I will fully admit I’ve been impressed by the follow up effort from him, which I didn’t think was coming.
Over his last 46 plate appearances, Shohei Ohtani has been starring with the bat in his hands. In those 11 games he’s gone deep five times, with 12 RBI and 10 runs scored. His slash line is also at all-star levels (.293/.348/.683) and the .414 wOBA suggests that he has finally found his groove. Look for impressive production to be the norm the rest of the season.
Joc Pederson has 18 homers and is easily on pace for his first season of 30 homers. Good for him. He also has a massive .932 OPS, though that is a deceiving mark if you ask me. Here’s why. (1) He still doesn’t run. He doesn’t have a single steal. (2) He isn’t even on pace for 80 RBI. (3) He’s unfailing awful against lefties. He’s simply never learned how to hit them. In 24 plate appearances this season he has no homers, one RBI and is hitting .167. This fact means he’s hard to use in weekly formats where you know he will give you a zero when the Dodgers are facing a lefty. (4) Over his last 21 plate appearances he doesn’t have a single hit. Since the start of June, 33 plate appearances, he’s hitting .069. (5) In 32 games on the road this season he’s been terrible with a .210-2-11 line. (6) His line drive rate is a career worst at 14.1 percent. (7) His launch angel is two percent down from last season at 13.6 percent. If used properly in the fantasy game he’s fine, but there are gapping holes.
What is this on the moon?
Victor Robles has nine homers and nine steals, putting the rookie on pace to go 20/20 with 80 runs scored. Everyone who has him on their squad will take that level of production. However, fantasy production vs. real world production with Robles tells a different story. Robles is batting .236/.310/.413 and that’s all league average or slightly worst. The 0.23 BB/K ratio is about 2/3 of the league average. Robles has an 80.9 mph exit velocity which is terrible and about six mph below the league average. His 25.1 hard-hit rate is terrible, especially in the contact of the league average of 34 percent. The advanced measures suggest that the average may not come up much, and that makes his OBP being league average a more likely outcome than I thought it would be three months ago.
Juan Soto had a .292/406/.517 slash line last season. This season, despite a slow start, he’s sitting at .290/.388/.500. Yes, virtually identical, and since May 15th the numbers are astounding at .354/.430/.576 with a 162 wRC+. That slow start is a distant memory. The BB/K rate is down a bit, from 0.80 to 0.60, but this GB/FB ratio is also down as well from 1.87 to 1.37 this year. We hoped he would learn to lift the ball a bit more, and it seems like he is. Soto has improved his fly ball rate nearly five percent, though it’s still below the league average at 33.5 percent. A better note is the significant launch angle improvement from 5.5 to 10.5 percent this season. Really, we need another similar move from him next year for him to become a 30-homer bat. That 10.5 percent mark this season is below the league average of 11 percent.
Chris Taylor is likely gonna step into a whole lotta playing time with Corey Seager heading to the DL with a hamstring issue (it sounds like 4-6 weeks on the shelf). Taylor was really good in 2017 (.288-21-72-85-17). He was solid last season (.254-17-63-85-). This year, he’s been bad (.218-5-23-18-4). Taylor qualifies at shortstop and in the outfield, and he might even have second base eligibility in leagues. However, he has just 13 steals his last 219 games, and he’s also failed to reach the league average in that time in AVG (.246) or OBP (.320). His .282 BABIP is .057 points below his career number, but he has low end exit velocity (84 mph) and hard-hit rate (27.5 percent) which don’t lead to much excitement. There’s not much to suggest he will get back to 2017 levels, but if he’s at 2018 levels if could have some value in deeper mixed leagues in the short run.
Just a note. Check the WW and make sure that Justin Upton isn’t there. If he is floating around, add him now. He’s on the cusp of finally returning from the toe issue that has had him on the sidelines all season. Don’t forget just how solid an offensive player he has been for years. He should, with health, have a very reasonable change to be at least a top-40 outfielder in the second half.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday-Friday, 8-10 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). Follow Ray’s work on Twitter (@baseballguys) and be sure to listen to his podcast work too.
