Brad Hawpe is putting together some kind of season considering how awful most of his first half turned out. Hawpe slammed his 20th homer of the year yesterday as he went 2-4 with 1 HR and 2 RBI in a 4-3 win over the Nationals. He's batting .478 (11-23) in his last 6 games with 3 HR, 7 RBI, 3 R and 3 2B. The incredible second half continues and the amazing thing for Hawpe is that his ISO of .212 is very close to the finishing .223 that he put up in 2007. He has absolutely crushed the ball since the beginning of June as his ISO is .293 since June 1st. That is a ridiculous number for a guy who has yet to break to 30-HR mark. Look for a very strong finish from Hawpe this year and if the kid learns how to hit lefties in 2009, we could be looking at an enormous year.
Mike Pelfrey was pretty impressive last night against the Pirates as he tossed 7 shutout innings, allowing no walks but striking out just 1 batter. Despite the lack of strikeouts, he was fairly efficient as he threw 98 pitches but his strike percentage was a little low at 59%. The important thing for Pelfrey was the fact that he kept the ball down, which then kept the ball out of the air (14 GB, 5 FB). The young Mets' pitcher has improved in almost every peripheral from last season to this season and the biggest improvement has been in his BB/9 (4.83 to 3.13). I think he's going to put together a very strong year next year and he won't go high in any draft, so when it comes to Pelfrey you should be thinking in terms of 2009.
I am now officially concerned about Carlos Zambrano. It took the Chicago ace 119 pitches to get through only 6 innings last night and the inefficiency showed in his very poor outing. Zambrano tossed 6 innings, allowing 5 ER on 4 H and a very uncharacteristic 5 BB. With the workload that Zam puts in year-in-and-year-out, you have to imagine it's going to wear on that fantastic arm of his. I think it's certainly starting to wear right now. I'm not worried about injury, but at this point Lou Pinella needs to look at limiting his ace's innings for his next couple starts.
Stephen Drew seems very comfortable in the leadoff spot for the D-Backs and he truly does fit the role far better than Chris B. Young. Drew collected another multi-hit game last night as he went 2-4 with 2 R and raised his BA for the year to .284. Drew is the newest hot hitter in the game right now as the multi-hit night extended his hitting streak to 17 games. During this streak, Drew is batting .360 (27-75) with 2 HR, 7 RBI, 13 R, 8 2B and 1 SB. His line for 2008 is .284/14/49/66 and we have seen a definite growth in his game (especially power and BA) since his initial call-up in 2006. Drew is really starting to fill out to what we have expected and should be a great pick in 2009, especially considering he still shouldn't be ranked all that high compared to most of the elite SS.
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