Mike Aviles – When Aviles was first called up, I liked him in AL leagues because of some of the things he had done in the minor leagues, but I did not expect the level of success he is having now (.314/.340/.489). Aviles is hot right now, and he hit his 6th homer of the season last night. Since joining the big league club just 48 games ago, Aviles has really had an up and down year. He started off hot, posting an amazing 1.016 OPS over his first 19 games with a .352 average. Aviles then cooled off considerably, going just 5 for his next 39 in the next 10 games, with all 5 of this hits going only for singles. It seemed as if the rookie was going to slump hugely, as his batting average fell all the way to .273, but then he got hot again, hitting .372/.395/.538 from July 7th to July 28th to raise his batting average back up over 300 to .314. Unfortunately, I think Aviles is in store for another cold streak. Keep in mind he is just a rookie, and he has a terrible EYE (.226). That is not to say Aviles is a fluke, it is just to say that someone with that bad of an EYE, especially a rookie, is going to have a hard time being consistent at the place and another dip in production like we saw towards the end of June would not surprise me.
Gil Meche – Meche picked up his 9th victory of the seasons last night, evening out his record. Meche has done a good job the past 2 seasons of reducing his walk rate to at least a respectable level (2.58 and 2.96 per 9 innings in ’07 and ’08 compared to walk ratios of over 4 the previous 2 years), but he has been unable to match his k rate from 2006 that made him a pretty coveted free agent heading into the 2007 season. In 2006 his K rate was .84, but it has been just .72 and .73 last season and this season respectively. Last night, Meche was on, striking out 8 in 7 innings, but don’t look at this outing as a sign of things to come, especially since Oakland has struck out the 4th highest amount of any team in baseball.
Matt Garza – Matt Garza was on his game last night, tossing his 1st career shutout. Garza’s control was key; he struck out 5 while walking just one. Schuyler and Drew both touched on Garza’s increased K rate earlier this month, and if you look at the numbers you can see that something clicked for Garza during late May. In his first 8 starts, Garza did not strikeout 5 or more batters in a single game one time. Yet, Garza has been able to accomplish that feat in 7 of his past 12 games, including a pair of 10 K games. Over that span, which started on May 28th, Garza’s K/BB ratio has been an impressive 3.39, which is much improved over his season total of 2.03. Those numbers tell me that Garza is not getting lucky. Rather, his current hot streak is a result of an improvement in skill, and he should continue to post good totals for the rest of the season.
Kevin Millar – Kevin Millar is flashing some power that we really have not seen out of him since his 25 HR campaign back in 2003 with the Boston Red Sox. Last night, Millar hit his 16th homer of the season, which was also his 2nd homer in as many nights as well as his 4th homer in 5 games. With nothing abnormal sticking out about Millar’s FB% or HR/FB% ratio, I don’t see any reason why he cannot wind up with 25 HR again this season. On top of that, I see some batting average upside for Millar, who is hitting just .245. He has a very, very good EYE of .93 (the best of his career), but a bad singles average is keeping him down. Currently, Millar’s singles average is just .208, but his previous 4 year average is .246 (right around the MLB average) with a low of .228. There is no reason not to expect that number to normalize, which will clearly lead to a higher batting average for Millar the rest of the way.
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