On Tour With Lil Xan

Xander Bogaerts (BOS): 3-4, 1 HR, 2 R, 2 RBI.

Maybe Xander Bogaerts is finally having his year. Since he became Boston’s everyday shortstop in 2014, only Francisco Lindor has more fWAR at the position. And it’s not just volume, either. Since 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, it doesn’t matter—Bogaerts has been at worst one of the four or five best shortstops in baseball.

At the same time, it feels to me like there’s never been a season where one asks “best shortstop in baseball?” and comes to Bogaerts in a near-instant. Lindor has been an All-Star fixture since 2016; Javier Báez finished second in 2018 MVP voting; Trevor Story nearly went 30-30 two consecutive seasons; Corey Seager tied postseason homer records; Fernando Tatís Jr. became Fernando Tatís Jr. Compared to these flashes of brilliance, it feels like Bogaerts has never quite had his moment.

Maybe that’s changing this year. Boston maintained their pole position in the American League on Saturday, moving to 21-13 with an 11-6 win over the Orioles powered by Bogaerts, who had three hits in four plate appearances, including a mammoth 414-foot bomb over the Monster at the expense of Tyler Wells. Bogaerts is now fourth in the big leagues with a .357 batting average, and he leads all shortstops with 1.7 fWAR, good for sixth in MLB. He leads the major leagues with 45 hits, three ahead of teammate J.D. Martinez. He’s as strong as shortstops come this side of Tatís, with his max exit velo this season approaching 114 MPH. He excels at simply hitting it where they ain’t, running an 84% contact rate in the top 20% of the league, a .324 expected batting average in the top 7% of the league, and a .493 wOBACON that’s 22nd baseball, sandwiched between Joey Gallo and Trent Grisham.

In spite of their hot start, FanGraphs still has Boston’s playoff odds at just 57%. It’s a team with a lot of holes. If the Red Sox are going to make good on their promising opening act, it might take an MVP-caliber campaign from Bogaerts (or his left-side colleague Rafael Devers) to make it happen. He’s off to the kind of start that makes one think it’s a possibility.

Let’s see how the other hitters did Saturday

Paul Goldschmidt (STL): 3-5, 1 HR, 3 R, 3 RBI.

Goldy is off to a slow start for the second time in three years on the banks of the Mississippi, but that might already be history for the Cardinals first baseman, who’s slashed .370/.414/.630 over his last seven games and recorded the two hardest-hit balls of Saturday’s win in Colorado, checking in at 111 and 108 MPH respectively. Not to be left behind, his first-inning single against Chi Chi González was also a rocket, breaking 104 MPH. His 3 RBI leave him at 20 on the season, just one shy of his total for all of last year.

Paul DeJong (STL): 2-3, 1 2B, 1 R, 2 RBI, 2 BB, 2 SB.

Also off to a brutal start this season, DeJong threw it back to his 2019 All-Star form on Saturday, filling up the scoresheet with his third double of the season, two walks, and two stolen bases in the Cardinals’ slim 9-8 win. Both of his hits cleared 100 MPH exit velocities, and in spite of all his other struggles, his BB% is now at a career-high 11.5%. Colorado can cure a lot of ailments!

Charlie Blackmon (COL): 3-4, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 BB.

On the other side of things in Colorado, Chuck Nasty looks ready to break out of his own—you guessed it—slow start of the season, recording his first three-hit game of the 2021 season and his fifth multi-hit outing in his last 11 games. His walk was his 14th on the season, and like DeJong, he’s recording career-bests in walk and strikeout rates (2.6% K-BB) despite his sluggish April.

Alex Bregman (HOU): 3-4, 2 2B, 2 R.

Bregman helped set up the bulk of Houston’s offense in their 8-4 loss to Toronto, doubling twice and scoring twice to bring his OPS to an even .900 on the season. He’s now hitting over .400 in his last week’s worth of games and should be a good bet for a .300 batting average and a boatload of counting stats for the rest of the year.

Yasmani Grandal (CWS): 0-0, 4 BB, 1 RBI.

There were seven four-walk performances in 2020—Christian Yelich was the only one with multiple—and the first of 2021 goes to Yasmani Grandal who, as Kyle Horton recently covered, is’ having an extraordinarily weird season as far as batting lines go. Through 21 games and 68 plate appearances, Grandal’s .121/.388/.259 line is pretty much unheard of. Such a span of 21 games with that many plate appearances has only been done twice in a single season, most recently in 1950 by Eddie Lake and preceded only by the legendary Sammy Strang in 1908. The batting average could feasibly stay below .200, and he could also feasibly walk more than 100 times while striking out quite a bit less. 2021 sure is a strange statline.

Yoan Moncada (CWS): 2-5, 1 2B, 1 R, 3 RBI.

Moncada has quietly bounced back nicely from his Covid-impacted slump last season, ranking sixth among third basemen with 1.1 fWAR, but last night’s two-hit performance, both of which came in the first inning, broke him out of a week-long mini-slump in which he hit just .190/.292/.238. His solid overall line comes in spite of the fact that he’s had yet to really catch fire, and it’s hard to know what to make of his profile this year. He’s maintained last year’s elevated walk rate while bringing his strikeouts back to his breakout 2019 levels, and while his xwOBACON has improved by 50 points this season, it’s still below 2019 levels, and most concerningly, his max exit velocity is still hovering at last season’s mark of 109 MPH, down from the 113-115 MPH peaks he had previously hit. It’s a mixed bag; the rest of his first half could go in a lot of different directions.

Avisaíl García (MIL): 3-5, 1 HR, 1 R, 2 RBI.

García hits the ball hard, and when he gets the ball in the air like he did last night, good things happen. He torched two balls at 107 MPH against Daniel Castano and John Curtiss, the latter of which left the yard for a majestic, 160-foot high two-run homer to cement Milwaukee’s lead in the fifth inning. He’s slumped a bit as of late, but the story has been more or less the same with Avi in 2021. On the season, he’s posted a league-average 100 wRC+ attained through a combination of top-tier exit velocities and far too many grounders (53% GB%). Hitting the ball that hard still gets you games like this now and then, though, so García’s evaluation remains pretty much the same as ever.

Joey Gallo (TEX): 2-4, 2 HR, 2 R, 3 RBI.

The night’s only multi-homer performance belongs to Gallo, who recorded the highest exit velocity in Texas’s 9-8 nailbiter win against Seattle with his 109 MPH rocket of a dinger against Ljay Newsome, just two innings after muscling a 95 MPH fastball from Erik Swanson down the opposite-field line for his first of the day. As is par for the course with Gallo, neither were cheapies, with expected batting averages of 1.000 on each homer.

Francisco Lindor (NYM): 2-3, 1 2B, 1 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 SB.

In a development that absolutely nobody saw coming, Lindor seems to be getting in a rhythm at the plate, recording multiple hits and an extra-base hit in consecutive games for the first time this year. Lindor also stole his 100th career base on Saturday, drawing a walk and then coming all the way around to score after Carson Kelly’s throw caromed into the outfield. He also came just a few feet away from homering in his second straight game, with his fifth-inning double against Merrill Kelly flying more than 400 feet before landing at the base of the wall. Let the Queens festivities begin!

Robbie Grossman (DET): 3-3, 1 2B, 1 HR, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB.

The veteran outfielder did it all for Detroit, reaching base in all four of his plate appearances and picking up 7 total bases along the way, scoring twice and notching the team’s hardest-hit batted ball of the day with his 400-foot leadoff homer against an unsuspecting José Berríos in the 1st inning.

Austin Slater (SF): 2-2, 1 HR, 1 R, 3 RBI.

Slater was ready when his name was called on Saturday, pinch-hitting for Mike Tauchman in the 6th inning and singling before launching a monstrous home run to dead center field—no easy task in Oracle Park!—that deserves a little recognition here.

Seth Brown (OAK): 2-4, 1 HR, 1 R, 3 RBI.

Brown continues to seize upon his first everyday opportunity in the big leagues, following up his Friday night walk-off with a quick second act in the 1st inning. turning around a 96 MPH fastball from Tyler Glasnow for a 412-foot blast to dead center field. Brown’s OPS over his last 15 games is 1.085, and he looks like he’ll spend this season as one of Oakland’s prototypical corner outfield righty-mashers in the mold of Seth Smith, Brandon Moss, and Matt Joyce in years past. He certainly has the power, with a 112+ MPH max exit velocity that’s in the top ten percent of the league.

Jean Segura (PHI): 3-4, 1 HR, 1 R, 1 RBI.

Segura remains absolutely on fire to start his 2021, raising his slash line to .391/.411/.536 after Saturday’s performance helped get the Phillies to extra innings before Atlanta finally prevailed in 12. After recording four hits on Friday night, Segura now has hits in seven of his last eight plate appearances, though Philly has little to show for it. There’s also little new in Segura’s discipline and batted ball profile to suggest that there’s much different about him from years past, but he did record his hardest-hit batted ball of the season yesterday, with a 112 MPH laser yanked down the left-field line against Ian Anderson.

Mookie Betts (LAD): 2-3, 2 R, 4 RBI, 1 BB.

Mookie did Mookie things on Saturday night, twice coming up with two-RBI singles, twice scoring, and walking once in the Dodgers’ wild 14-11 win over their intercounty rivals. After some folks took note of his uncharacteristically slow start, Betts has stepped it up over the last few days, slashing .321/.424/.607 over his last seven games. When Mookie gets hot, he gets hot; we may be starting to see quite a bit more of Markus in the Batter’s Box pages in the coming weeks.

Jared Walsh (LAA): 2-4, 1 R, 3 RBI, 1 BB.

Meanwhile, all Jared Walsh did was help transform a 13-0 Dodger lead into a respectable 14-11 Dodger final, smoking singles at 106 and 110 MPH to drive in three runs, capping it off with a walk in the Angels’ high-scoring loss. Walsh is now in possession of an eye-popping 165 wRC+ through 125 plate appearances, more than enough of a sample size to wonder if there might be something there beyond his lukewarm Statcast numbers and expected statistics.

 

Featured Imaged by Ethan Kaplan (@DJFreddie10 on Twitter)