Michael Saunders, Toronto Blue Jays - Saunders' blistering start to the season has slowed a ton as of late as he's now only homered four times since his three homer game on June 17th. Saunders launched a pair of homer Saturday giving him three bombs in the last two days. It's not like he's just in a power drought through... In that same span (June 18th-today) he's triple slashing .222/.307/.364 with a 29.8% K rate, all adding up to a 79 wRC+. We can't even chalk it up to a low BABIP either as it's still a .308 over this date span. He's stopped hitting fly balls at the same rate and that look to be really the only reason that he's been struggling so badly.
Nelson Cruz, Seattle Mariners - Cruz is now a quarter of the way to a hundred homers this season after homering twice and driving in seven runs on Saturday. The two homers are only his third and fourth of the month and his seven RBI he drove in Saturday are two more than he had in the entire month. However he's still have a fantastic month with a 143 wRC+ and .379 wOBA. Somehow he hasn't hit more homers this month though as he has a 37.5% FB rate and a 52.5% hard hit rate. Makes it sound like a homer binge could be on the way.
Evan Gattis, Houston Astros - Gattis launched his 14th and 15th homer of the season last night which were his first homers since July 6th. While Gattis is putting up really good power numbers, on pace for 32 homers over a 600 AB season, but overall he's still a below average hitter posting a 91 wRC+ and his triple slash is a brutal .224/.289/.451.He's pulling the ball in 50% of his at bats which means he can make for a nice play at home with how his home park is set up, but that may be about the only time you can use him.
Kendall Graveman, Oakland A's - Graveman allowed three earned runs in his complete game win, pushing his record to 7-6 for the season. He took advantage of facing the Rays who are one of the worst teams in the league when it comes to facing righties. I'm still not interested at all in what Graveman is doing. He has fewer than a 6 K/9 and a walk rate near three per nine which leaves him with a 4.15 ERA and a 4.43 FIP. The hard hit rate against him as also took a bit of a jump up to 32%, but with a sub-30% FB% lets him get away with a bit more. You basically have to rely on him to get the win, and that's extremely tough to guess at.
Yordano Ventura, Kansas City Royals - Yordano left Saturday's start with a rib injury but that didn't stop him from picking up his 8th loss of the season. He allowed three runs in five innings with four walks and five strikeouts. Ventura continues to be frustrating for me because a player with his stuff have a sub-7.00 K/9 and his walk rate continues to climb and he's up to 3.81 BB/9 this year. He's steadily declined in terms of FIP and this year has been the biggest jump going from 3.57 FIP to 4.66 this season. It's really tough to trust him at this point, and I'd really have a hard time even rostering him.
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