Charlie Blackmon - Charlie Blackmon has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball as of late, but took an 0-for-4 line on Saturday for the Rockies. Over his last 12 games entering Saturday he posted a .511 wOBA and a 203wRC+ with four homers, 18 RBI, and two steals. He's putting up nearly identical numbers as his huge season last year where he hits 29 homers and stole 17 bags, but is on pace for slightly more homers and a few stolen bases shy. He quietly became one of fantasy baseball's best superstars.
Yasmani Grandal - hot 14 - Yasmani Grandal has been on fire for last two weeks with a .342/.405/.59 triple slash and a 163 wRC+. He had a slow game Satuday though going just 1-for-4 with a run scored but he's sitting with the second highest wRC+ for the year among qualified catchers at 131 behind a guy named Buster Posey. I wonder how long we'll see his average around the .300 mark as he currently has a BABIP worlds above his career high with just a slightly lower soft contact rate than last season and a career ground ball rate. Regardless, there aren't many catchers I like more than him for the rest of the season.
Odubel Herrera - Odubel Herrera's terrible 2017 continued Saturday with an 0-for-4 performance against the Reds. His .222/.269/.335 triple slash is incredibly down from last season where he had a .286/.361/.420 slash line with a wRC+ that's essentially been sliced in half. He has the highest hard contact rate of his career but he's selling out to pull everything and hitting a lot of ground balls. His strikeout rate and walk rate have both gone in the wrong directions by about 5% each, and his swinging strike rate has taken a huge jump up to 14.7% compared to 10.6% last season. There isn't a ton suggesting here that a rebound is imminent so you'd have to be all knowing to decide on a buy low chance here.
Andrew McCutchen - Andrew McCutchen launched a three run homer Saturday for one of two hits plus he walked once in the Pirates win in extras. Last season we saw McCutchen get off to an extremely slow start but we saw him bounce back eventually. Well the bounce back sure as heck didn't happen in May as his wRC+ was a 41after a 98 wRC+ in April. His hard contact rate has now dropped a sihnificant amount for now the second season in a row and his LD% has dropped 7% compared to last season. One positive sign for him is that his contact rate has jumped back up this year so you can hope that he turn it around but I think the days of elite production from him are long gone.
Gerrit Cole - Gerrit Cole now has back to back bad starts as he surrendered three homers in just five innings in a no decision. While he gave up four runs in the outing it likely could have been much more as he surrendered 10 hits on the day. In fact, over his last 9.2 innings he's allowed 20 hits and five homers. He's been prone to giving up homers this year for really the first time in his career as his previous high for HR/FB was 9.4% and we are sitting at 17.1% after the three long balls today. I'm still not overly worried about Cole because a near 20% HR/FB rate definitely will come down and when it does he's been really good as of a 3.85 xFIP.
This is just a small sample our our daily analysis, join our member area for over 80 player updates daily. Click here for details: https://www.insiderbaseball.com/baseballsample.htm Click here to register: http://www.fantistics.com/salesbaseball.php3
