JD Martinez, Detroit Tigers - Martinez was on fire Tuesday afternoon turning in a 4-for-5 game with two RBI which was his first RBI beside a solo homerun he's hit this season. While the power numbers aren't quite what we like to see from him, I do remember him hitingthe warning track in dead center in Miami at least twice in one game. He's hitting the ball ridiculously hard (per usual) with a 47.1% hard hit rate and he's hitting 64.7% of his balls in the air meaning that the homers are on the way and I think we could see a few this weekend as the Tigers travel to Houston this weekend.
Masahiro Tanaka, New York Yankees - Tanaka earned a no decision Tuesday against the Jays allowing two runs in five innings. He was striking out batters at a better rate with six in his 5.0 innings as opposed to just four strikeouts in his first start of the season in 5.2 innings. Right now he's throwing his fastball at a ridiculously low rate (14.9%) and relying on his curve and split-finger more than ever. The concern there could be that high splitter usage has been linked in cases to elbow issues and Tanaka's elbow still to me is a timebomb waiting to go off.
Mark Trumbo, Baltimore Orioles - Trumbo turned in a 3-for-5 performance against the Reds with his second homer of the season. He's off to a ridiculously hot start to his 2016 triple slashing .464/.500/.714 to this point in the year. He got off to a hot start last season as well hitting .319 in the first month with two homers, but his average dropped to .237 and then .134 over those next two months with seven homers in May but had lone homerun in June. Going further back, in 2013 he had a similar .300-to-.248-to-.200 batting average drop over the first three full months of the season. This is possibly something we need to keep in mind towards the end of the month.
Justin Upton, Detroit Tigers - Upton finally homered for the first time as a Tiger Tuesday in a 4-for-5 game with the homer and two RBI. He scored three runs as well but did strikeout for the 11th time this season (39.3% K%). Upton is still hitting for a good average this year (.333) but most of that came from this past 4-for-5 game. A huge issue for Upton is his 16.7% hard hit rate which is nearly half of what his career rate is. Opposite of that, he does have only a 8.3% soft contact rate so I expect to see more of these kind of game now that they are finally getting to hit in some hitter friendly parks.
Wade Miley, Seattle Mariners - Miley struggled again on Tuesday taking his first loss of the season after allowing six runs in six innings running his total to 11 runs in 12.0 innings this year. The lone bright spot for Miley has been his ridiculous command so far with 14 strikeouts against zero walks. In his first start of the season he was helped by batters reaching for pitches and swinging at 45.8% of his pitches that were out of the strike zone. Once his pitch data for Tuesday's game goes into Fangraphs we can see if that continued through start #2.
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