Bud Norris - Norris pitched very well on Monday, holding the White Sox to 2 runs on 3 hits over 7 innings of work, striking out 5 without walking a batter. Norris has improved his control, GB rate, and velocity significantly this year, but it seems like the drop in K rate has helped his stats be viewed with a negative bias. You always have to be careful about cherry-picking data when trying to make a case for a player, but Norris has improved his offspeed pitches from major negatives to minor positives this season (mostly with the change, which has improved from his worst or second worst pitch to his best this season), which has likely allowed him to become significantly more effective with men on base. Norris set a career high in wins Monday with his 11th of the year, and he has a career-best WHIP as well. If your league uses K-BB instead of just K's, he hasn't even retrenched there very much. Norris seems to be gradually turning himself into a decent back-end starter instead of a high-risk/high-reward streamer, which does limit the top end a bit, but probably increases the likelihood that he should be owned in your league overall.
Chris Taylor - Chris Taylor is getting most of the playing time at SS for the Mariners of late, and as the possessor of a 320/409/463 career minor league line, perhaps people are ignoring him a bit too much. He doesn't have a lot of over-the-fence power, but he hits a lot of doubles and has managed at least a .293 AVG at every level with good speed. That would make him easily valuable enough to justify a roster spot in formats of moderate depth or greater, even just as injury insurance in the middle infield. He's still just 23 to boot, so perhaps some of that doubles power will grow. He deserves to be talked about more than he has been to date.
Oswaldo Arcia - Arcia homered again on Monday, giving him 4 over his last 6 games and 12 for the year. The AVG will scare many away, and Arcia definitely has contact issues that weigh on it, but he's had some awful luck with BABIP this season (23.6% LD rate, .293 BABIP). I see a future 30-HR hitter at a minimum in Arcia, and I don't think the AVG will continue to be a major problem like this...despite the contact issues he simply hits the ball too hard the rest of the time. I definitely like him as a cheap power source, both now and for the future.
Chris Carter - Carter has been on a crazy tear, homering 10 times since the break with an AVG over .300. He's had tears like this before, but they usually last a week or two....not seven. He says that he's consciously trying to shorten his swing to improve his contact rate (well, he doesn't say it exactly like that), and his K rate has indeed dropped by 1/4 in the past month. Whether that's just noise or not remains to be seen, but visually his swing does indeed look more compact. The likelihood that Carter can be more than a .260 hitter over the length of a season is pretty minimal, but even cutting back a few percentage points on the strikeouts will pay huge dividends for a player with his power. 40 homers are a distinct possiblity, and you'll have to get back to me in October on this one, but for now I think I'd like the over on .250 for his 2015 AVG, which would make him a huge asset.
Mookie Betts - Betts is back with the Red Sox, going 1-3 with a walk and a run in the 4-2 loss to the Angels on Monday. He's slated to be the everyday CF for at least the next few weeks, and as a 21 year old that has hit better than .340 at the upper three levels of the minors with 15 HR/25 SB potential, he should be snapped up in most formats once again. There is still the danger that the power won't translate, but the excellent contact rate and solid speed should at the very least.
