Josh Hamilton - Hamilton continued his hot hitting with his 11th homer last night, and with his strikeouts down 8% while basically everything else has remained the same, you've got to be more and more excited about his long-term potential. Although Hamilton turns 27 tomorrow, he lost basically five years of prime development time, so like Rick Ankiel he may very well continue to grow as a hitter through his late 20's. Especially in that home park, Hamilton appears to be a tremendous asset right now, and the future prospects look even better.
John Buck - The 27 year old Buck returns to the Royals today after the birth of his twin sons, and although Miguel Olivo has been hot in his absence, that shouldn't eat into Buck's playing time very much. Buck is actually hitting the ball in the air a bit more this year than in years past, and his strikeouts are down considerably along with a slight uptick in walks, so you'd think he'd be having an excellent start to the year. Although his OBP is up for the fourth straight season, finally approaching respectability, less than half of his normal percentage of flyballs are going for homers. I'd have to think that will change as the weather warms up a bit, so I still expect Buck to continue growing as a hitter this season.
Jason Varitek - Varitek is on fire, picking up multi-hit games in each of his last four outings and batting 360/458/600 for the month of May. 36 year old catchers, especially those with as much mileage as Varitek, don't experience this sort of resurgence very often (his ISO of .210 would be the third highest of his career). He's a decent sell-high candidate at any level around this, particularly in keeper leagues.
Michael Cuddyer - Cuddyer went 0-6 yesterday, but with no K's once again. He's had a very disappointing start to the year, making a ton of contact (BB's and K's are both down over 4%) but without much to show for it. His LD% is up, which doesn't correlate well with his AVG being down over 40 points, but other than that everything he's hitting in the air is a popup (almost 20% infield flies). He just seems to be off a touch, as the contact rate is more reliable as far as I'm concerned than the lack of power thus far. I'd expect him to heat up fairly soon, so he isn't a bad buy-low candidate in deeper leagues.
Alex Rios - Rios continues to scuffle, putting up only 3 walks against 21's so far in May. He has one extra-base hit since May 8th, hasn't homered since May 1st, and hasn't stolen a base since May 3rd. In short, it's the worst slump of his career. His strikeouts are up 8% (to 24.2%) this season, and he's hitting the ball on the ground more than he has since 2005 (the last year he posted under a .400 SLG). I agree with Tony, he absolutely needs to find a spot on your bench until he turns things around. This is definitely not what anyone expected to see out of an age 27 season.
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