Very quietly, Justin Turner has a .446 OBP, with an insane 152 wRC+ on the year. Still he has just 1 HR. Turner's BABIP as you might imagine is quite high at .421, about 100 points over his career average. Will we see a big batting average regression soon? Yes, but fortunately, that should be somewhat abated from an increase in HR. Turner hits fly balls nearly 40% of the time, which is usually associated with a lower BABIP and higher HR amount, but we've yet to see that. Enjoy the high average but expect the power numbers to kick in soon, albeit at the expense of average.
Yasiel Puig was 1-for-4 with 2 RBI and an SB. He batted out of the 8 spot again, which is awful for his fantasy value, though he's batting over .350 from that part of the order. I think he'll continue to underperform his name value for the rest of the season, playing right around league average. He isn't the same exciting player that he was a few years ago. His LD% is a pedantic 15%, and he's hitting groundballs nearly 50% of the time, which will make it difficult for him to hit above .260. Compared to his best season, his Hard% is down from 37.5% to 30.1% this season; clearly he's not the same player.
Jake Lamb hit his 9th HR of the season and added 2 walks on the day. It's been another great start to the year for Lamb, his wRC+ is over 120 for the year vs. 114 last season. The power numbers are for real, but he'll be somewhat limited if he continued with his 47.9% GB rate. In addition, the .364 BABIP he has right now is almost 50 points higher than his career average, so expect an average closer to .250 rest of season. The results are good so far but I'm hoping he hits some more fly balls to ensure he gets to 30 HR on the year.
Dee Gordon was 0-for-3 yesterday and now sports just a .308 OBP for the season, but that didn't stop him from swiping his 12th base of the season against Lance McCullers by taking third base. Gordon's wRC+ has actually declined from last year's dreadful 72. There's some good news here; he appears to be quite unfortunate on balls in play as evidenced by his .298 BABIP, which is well below his career .339 rate. There's some BA upside which should lead to more counting stats, including SB and runs. Let's not forget his stole 30 bases last year in just 79 games, so he's a legitimate 50+ SB candidate that may be under the radar right now. I'd shoot out some offers.
31-year old Johnny Cueto continued his poor season, allowing 5 ER in 6 innings by allowing 7 hits and a walk. Cueto was a bit unfortunate yesterday as 40% of balls in play were hits, but it hasn't been an unlucky season; he simply hasn't been that good. My best guess is that Cueto has lost some of his command; his walk rate is up to 2.60 per 9 and his Hard% is nearly 8% higher than his career average. So it would seem he's having trouble hitting his spots; the good news is that he's still missing bats, so hopefully we see an improvement in Cueto's numbers soon. Despite yesterday's poor outing, it wasn't as bad as it seemed.
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