Josh Donaldson, Toronto Blue Jays - Josh Donaldson launched homers 21 and 22 Tuesday in the Blue Jays win and now is currently on pace to have career highs in a plethora of categories. Since the beginning of June, Donaldson is slashing .375/.503/.696 with seven homers, 29 RBI, and three steals with a .321 ISO. While the current stretch he's on is pretty ridiculous, none of his overall season numbers are unsustainable as he's got a .321 BABIP on the season and that's a helped by a 41.9% hard hit rate. Combining that with a career high pull rate and fly ball rate, there's no doubt as to why we have seen the uptick in stats that we have.
Wade Davis, Kansas City Royals - Wade Davis was placed on the 15 day DL Tuesday with a forearm strain and while that normally cause uses concern about an elbow injury as well, the team is reporting that the location of the strain is far from any ligaments. Ned Yost is hopeful that Davis will only be forced to miss the minimum of two weeks and compared the injury to the one Chris Young had earlier in the season. He also said that this is an injury that Davis had last season but pitched through it down the stretch run and in the playoffs. While Davis has had a bit more control issues than before in his career, he's still saved 19 games and is posting a 1.23 ERA so if an owner panics and drops him, immediately pick him up because the injury doesn't sound serious at all.
Chris Young, Kansas City Royals - Chris Young is really bad, and that continued Tuesday with six earned runs in 2.1 innings while allowing seven hits. Oddly enough, the one thing that he's doing for the first time ever as he's striking out over a batter per innings while his career average is about 7.5 per nine. Batters have all of a sudden stopped hitting his pitches outside the zone as the swing rate on chase pitches is 0.5% but batters are making contact on 11% fewer of those swings/pitches. All of his pitches are up just a tick or two so I wonder if he would be able to throw in the bullpen despite the fact his fastball is only sitting at 87 MPH. His slider usage is literally crazy right now as he's throwing it 51.3% of the time while completely cutting out his curve and changeup. With just a fastball/slider combo and the swing rates being what they are, I really do think he could become an effective bullpen arm.
Carlos Carrasco, Cleveland Indians - Carlos Carrasco picked up his fifth win of the season with six innings of one run ball against the Tigers. In his seven starts since coming back from the DL he was winless for his first four starts before rattling off three straight wins now against the Tigers twice and the Blue Jays once. In those seven starts he has 48 strikeouts (good for a 9.17 K/9) which is making his season average climb up slowly and slowly. His FIP is well above his ERA but his ERA is helped by the Indians defense which ranks as the fourth best defense in the league in terms of defensive WAR. For the last few years the Indians have been hurting their pitchers in terms of FIP/ERA the narrative has finally reversed course.
Carlos Rodon, Chicago White Sox - Carlos Rodon got crushed by the Yankees dropping his overall record to 2-and-7 on the season as his disappointing 2016 continued. Both his K/9 and BB/9 are trending in the right directions, but we just haven't seen that reflected in his ERA. He's been plagued by the homerun ball too with a 15.5% HR/FB rate after posting a sub 10% HR/FB rate last season. Batters are making more contact against him across the board and that doesn't help his BABIP as it's currently 34% points higher than it was last season.
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