Max Scherzer left yesterday's start after just 1 inning. He injured himself presumably on his home run swing from the first inning. This is a horrible time for an injury as Scherzer is somehow having one of the best seasons of his career at age 33. The loss of Scherzer will certainly be a crushing blow to any fantasy team given how good he's been; hopefully it won't be a long-term injury.
Jameson Taillon was making for an incredible story following his comeback from medical leave earlier this year, and then the last two starts happened. Last week he allowed 9 ER (10 R), and yesterday was hardly much better as he allowed 8 ER in just 3.2 innings. The last two starts have destroyed Taillon's numbers on the season as his ERA went up .75 to 4.74 yesterday. It's tough to find silver lining following 17 ER in two starts, but he was having a fine year before these last two starts. Looking closer, his 8.5% SwStr% is quite poor and may indicate that he was a bit fortunate with his 8.7 K/9. All that said, I think he's droppable in redraft leagues. It will take at least 3 starts for me to trust Taillon again, and we'll be close to the end of August at that point - assuming he can figure things out.
Another day, another home run for Cody Bellinger as he connected for his 29th HR of the season. The cynic in me has me saying uncle and that the HRs and overall fantastic performance has to eventually stop for the rookie, but Bellinger continues to prove me wrong. He sports an insane 49% FB rate and is basically playing the volume game. His 26.7% HR/FB rate is great but not unreasonable. The key will - obviously - be if he can continue to put the ball in the air with that frequency. His FB% is fifth in the league behind Joey Gallo, Mike Napoli, Kyle Seager, and Matt Davidson; good company for HR hitters. At some point we'll see him struggle but at this rate it could take a few years.
Anthony Rizzo connected for his 25th HR of the season yesterday. Rizzo is putting together another fine season despite rocking a BABIP of just .242, which is 42 points below his career average. Rizzo has managed to decrease his K% to a career low 11.9%, which would command a higher batting average. He's batting a respectable .257 as the improve K% has offset the low BABIP; this suggests that we could see Rizzo further improve his batting average in the next few months as his luck improves. It's worth noting that his LD% is down year-over-year, so he may be substituting the strikeouts for poor hit balls, but regardless, I think there's some additional upside.
Marcell Ozuna connected for his 25th HR of the season yesterday. Ozuna's HR pace has certainly slowed as he hit just 1 HR in July, but he's not disappointing with the RBI numbers (84) from hitting in the middle of the Marlins lineup. He also had 9 doubles in July, which softened the HR decrease. I see continued fantastic results from Ozuna as he has the highest Hard% of his career.
