Albies has done a lot of the hot and cold thing this season. Bradley always seems to do that for the Red Sox. Melky and Miguel Cabrera are both producing batting average. Castellanos has struggled to find his footing after two solid seasons. Elias Diaz has been passable with the bat in his hands. Donaldson has been flat out mashing of late. Brock Holt, I used his first name so you would know who he was, is hitting like an all-star. Hosmer has been hot, and he’s on pace to be – Hosmer. Don’t look now, but Kinsler is actually performing as he tries to hold off Urias. Machado is mashing. Newman is hitting, and might be a good pivot for those of you who lost Story and Mondesi. Franmil Reyes hits the ball hard and has a great name, so why am I not 100 percent in? Bryan Reynolds continues to produce hits while Dansby Swanson has fallen, and it doesn’t seem like he can get up.
Ozzie Albies has been all over the place this season. He’s had tremendous lows – he had a .614 OPS in May – and highs – 1.072 OPS in June. Add it all together and you get a guy on pace for a .280-24-85-100-10 season. What makes that pace more remarkable is that he’s hitting .233 on the road with a .639 OPS, and that he has a mere .767 OPS against righties this season. So, say it with me, Albies on the road against a lefty likely shouldn’t be in your lineup.
Jackie Bradley has had a career of ups and downs. It’s been more of the same this season for him. That said, he has an .850 OPS since the start of May, and that’s pretty darn solid. Still, over those 41 games he’s hit only .250, though that .363 OBP plays. Oh yeah, his 5×5 line of Bradley’s those last 41 outings is .250-7-19-22-3. Slightly boring, but certainly playable.
Melky Cabrera has been a tremendous producer given the lack of any type of expectation this offseason. He only has four homers and two steals, but over 191 at-bats Melky has hit .325. Were you aware of that? The effort includes a .325 mark at home, and a .325 mark on the road. Also, a .321 average against lefties and .326 against righties.
Miguel Cabrera has hits in 4-of-5 games with seven total hits. He’s pushed his average up to .297. His overall game is poor compared to his extreme heights from the past, but I’m pretty sure that every team out there could use a .297 batting average. By the way, he’s hit .298 his last 104 games (since the start of last season). No power, and that’s hard to feel good about given that he’s a corner infielder, but still, the average is legit.
Nicholas Castellanos went, on average, .285-24-95-80 the last two seasons with a .832 OPS. This season, he’s on pace for an effort of .268-16-58-97 with a .778 OPS. The good news follows. (1) He’s likely to be dealt, and it just has to be to a better situation. He simply hasn’t hit in Detroit this season with one homer and a .658 OPS. (2) He’s better than he’s showed. (3) He’s produced a hit in 9-of-10 games. The exit velocity is down one mph, but the hard-hit ball rate is down more than three percent from the last two seasons. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see those numbers improve, and think he’s a solid target to buy on the down-low.
Elias Diaz has hit .278 in June, with nine RBI, and that’s a playable second catcher in mixed leagues. Nothing great, but playable.
Josh Donaldson has really started to find the stroke. He hit a homer a couple days back against the Mets to the opposite field with a smooth, clean stroke. As they always say, when you start driving the ball to the opposite field, you’re locked in. Donaldson has at least one hit in 9-straight games proven that he is locked in. The last five games he’s had at least two hits four times. In fact, he’s about as hot as any player in baseball not named Charlie Blackmon the last nine outings with an amazing .385-6-11 line with a .529 wOBA and 231 wRC+.
Brock Holt is kinda the AL version of Melky Cabrera. He has one homer and one steal, but over 78 at-bats he’s hit .308 with a .382 OBP. Over his last six games he’s hit .391 with a .464 OBP as he’s drive in seven runs and scored six times. I personally picked him up last week in a 15-team mixed league, though I’m under no illusion that he’s a .300 hitter. He qualifies at shortstop/second base and in some leagues in the outfield as well.
Eric Hosmer has been really good, without being a standout performer, since the start of May. Over his last 45 games he’s hit six bombs, has driven in 32 runs and has scored 29 times. He’s also hit .310 with a .350 wOBA. Overall, he’s rocking the .288/.341/.453 slash line. Compare that to his career line (.280/.340/.434). He is what he is.
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Ian Kinsler is still holding off Luis Urias… for now. Over his last 15 games Kinsler has hit .333 with a .385 OBP and a .479 SLG. Meanwhile, Urias has slowed his roll in the minors with a .256 batting average over his last 43 at-bats.
Manny Machado is hot. Coors helped, sure, but over his last 17 games he’s hit .304 with five homers, 15 RBI and 16 runs scored. He’s just starting to get hot, yet he’s still on pace to go .270-30-90-90. He’s not running with two steals, but he was always going to be fine, and hit.
Kevin Newman’s last nine games, he has at least one hit each time out as he has hit a robust .366 with a .409 OBP and .512 SLG. He’s also swiped three bags. With Trevor Story and Adalberto Mondesi on the IL, Newman becomes a target if he’s still on waivers. Oh, by the way, he’s hit .315 over 47 games this season with a .366 OBP. Speaking of Mondesi for a moment… he has a groin issue. That throws into question how much running he will do, especially in the short-term. If he’s not running, his offensive game will slow appreciably. Realize that Mondesi’s average is down to .269, and all that hacking has led to a mere .302 OBP. It’s pretty remarkable that he’s been so impressive from a fantasy perspective when he has absolutely no earthly idea of how to get on base (he has a career .284 OBP that is only .034 points above his career batting average). By the way, I’ll talk more about the shortstop position in Saturday’s podcast.
Franmil Reyes has appeared in 158 games in his young career with an impressive total of 36 big flies. He has elite exit velocity and hard-hit ball numbers this season, and is an advanced metric followers wet-dream as a result. Still, let me be clear about the significant issues surrounding his overall game. Reyes has 36 homers but only 67 runs scored. More than half his runs scored have come on homers. He strikes out too much with a 28 percent K-rate, and those swing and miss ways are exacerbated by a less than ideal walk rate that has led to a terrible 0.28 BB/K rate that is only two-thirds of the league average. As a result, he has a .321 OBP for his young career, and the number is even worse this season at .300. Reyes also owns a mere 33 percent fly ball rate, two percent below the league average, as he’s the owner of a virtually impossible to sustain HR/FB rate of 32.1 percent. Here’s the deal. Reyes is likely to see his batting average dip a bit, his OBP is already dangerously low, and the homer pace will not be sustained. I fear we’ve made a bit too much out of the batted ball data with Reyes, who still has holes.
Bryan Reynolds has at least three hits in 3-of-6 games to boost his average up to an absurd .362. In 194 plate appearances, covering 53 outings, Reynolds also has a .418 OBP, a .571 SLG and a .416 wOBA. He’s living off an amazing .446 BABIP, and given that no one ever finishes a season with a mark of .400, you have to know that any day now the batting average slide will begin. He’s impressed though and is clearly a usable piece in all formats at the moment.
Dansby Swanson has been productive and usable everywhere, with a pace that would lead to a 25-90-90-10 type of season. Given his production to date entering the 2019 campaign, that would be a remarkable level of production. Alas, he hasn’t homered in 14-games, and during that stretch he doesn’t have a single RBI, is batting .228 and has simply stopped driving the ball baseball with a .298 SLG. I’ve never bought into his effort to date, and given the last two weeks I’m feeling pretty good about that call at the moment. He’s been much better, but realize that it’s a long season, and he still has much to prove.
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.
