Three homers by a single batter on a day when no other player in the league hit more than one is a guaranteed fast track to being the featured guy in our hitting recap. That's exactly what 1B/OF/DH Kendrys Morales pulled off yesterday in an 11-8 win over Baltimore by going 4-5, 4 R, 3 HR, 7 RBI. The trio of swats brings his homer total for 2017 to 25, and he's upped his BA to .253 with Thursday's showing even though it had been lingering in the .240s over the past couple weeks. Morales is a switch hitter but is drastically better for average as a RHB against southpaw pitching (.352, as compared to .223). The caveat there is that 19 of his 25 homers have come against righties, so you kind of have to pick your poison with Morales based on the pitching matchup. He's either power or BA, and you have account for what he's liable to do situationally relative to the rest of your lineup to really harness his fantasy value properly. Morales has hit at cleanup for the majority of the year, but he also has 38 appearances batting fifth and 10 at the 3-spot with the latter two positionings. Yesterday's batch of awesomeness was with him batting third, if you were curious. Regardless of where he slots, he's got 70 RBI and 60 runs, so there's ample production happening and he definitely warrants more ownership than the sub-60% he's sitting at in Yahoo and ESPN leagues for the rest of the season.
Without further ado, let's get to some summaries of other solid hitting performances from Thursday:
Reasonable to conclude that Jake Lamb is virtually certain a 1st half hitter. His dismal second half in 2016 was blamed on a hand injury. Im trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for 2017. Having a hard time, can you help me out?
With regard to LHP he faces, he’s actually been marginally better in the second half than he was early on. You just have to know to bench him against southpaws, especially on the road, in roto formats so he doesn’t drag your team’s batting average down. He’s still a great asset to own, but the root of his issue is not hitting well with RISP (.216 second half versus .274 first) and that’s probably why he lost his stranglehold on the cleanup spot. Lamb just has to mash his way back to his comfort zone at the 4-spot and then hopefully he’ll regain his form all over again.
I drafted out a REALLY long reply and accidentally clicked out of it. In summary, Lamb is getting really unlucky in the second half as far as BABIP and stuff outside of his control (i.e. defense/fielding, calls on the field, balls twisting foul when it’s windy, etc.). He had a .332 in the first half as compared with a .241 in the second when .300 is your standard of normal fortune. His second half hard hit rate is 32.2%, so producing legitimate contact is not a concern. His HR/FB ratio since the break is just 13.7% so yeah that is a bit low for my taste, but again, taking stock of the contact/BABIP perfect storm and realizing he’s not at fault for some of the flyballs not leaving the park makes it easier to accept.