Alright. It's time to talk about Aaron Altherr (and it's "all-tear" for anyone who thought it was "all-thair" like me). Altherr has been killing the ball lately, with an eight-game hitting streak, and three consecutive games with a home run. Wednesday night, he had his best night so far, going 2-4, 2 HR, 2 R, 4 RBI. Plus, I've heard people clamoring for him to be added to our Hitter List (which you should check out cause it's awesome). He's the man right now, and we need to sit down and have a chat about him. Altherr is batting .343 on the season so far and is crushing home runs, but is it legit? Well, it might be. There was some slight buzz about Altherr in the spring. A lot of analysts thought that maybe his dismal 2016 was due to him playing hurt. Plus, he made some adjustments to his swing in the offseason with the help of Phillies hitting coach Matt Stairs, he changed his swing path. It seems like that change has helped, as his hard hit rate has skyrocketed, and his exit velocity has gone up too, sitting in the same area as players like Manny Machado, Ryan Braun, and Justin Upton. He's added power to his game and it's turning him into a pretty well-rounded player. Is he going to regress? Yes, obviously, he's not going to keep up a .413 BABIP and a 36.8% HR/FB rate all year, but there's something here that makes him worth picking up as a speculative add. At the very least, ride the streak, and then if the struggles come, dump him. But those struggles might not be too bad.
Let's take a look at some of the other performances from Wednesday:
With Toles out for the year with the ACL injury plus AGon’s injury/mediocrity, the path to regular playing time looks pretty clear for Bellinger going forward. How do you see him ROS? Where would you rank him among similar players?
I would agree that Bellinger has a pretty clear path to playing time, and personally I really like him. Right now, he’s ranked #126 on our Hitter List. I could see him getting up to 25-30 home runs on the year while batting in the .260s or so ROS. I think his average will come down as his HR/FB rate levels out. He doesn’t hit much in the way of anything but fly balls, so as that HR/FB rate comes down, the number of fly ball outs will go up.
Thanks Ben, great stuff as always!
Thanks!