1. Curtis Granderson (OF - Yankees) - Granderson finally hit his first HR of June on Thursday night, connecting for his 18th HR of the year and his first since May 31st. It also helps break a June skid that has him hitting just .111 for the month. We all know Granderson was off to a tremendous start this year and maintaining that pace was highly unlikely. These first couple weeks of June look to be a slight statistical correction as he regresses back to the mean. Still, even with this slump, he's tied for 2nd in the majors for HR and has a .920+ OPS.
2. Josh Beckett (SP - Red Sox) - Just another QS for Josh Beckett, giving him 7 in a row and making him 10-for-13 on the season. A couple of earned runs to the Yankees on Thursday night raised his ERA slightly to 2.06, but he held them to only 4 hits and 2 walks, dropping his WHIP to 1.01. Despite being one of the best pitchers in the AL thus far in 2011, he has only managed to earn 5 W's to his name. Chalk that up to some bad luck. Comparing this season to previous effective seasons, Beckett has a slightly lower K rate with a K/9 of 7.9 in 2011 compared to his 4-year average of 8.6 since 2007. I'd feel more confident that he'll maintain this Cy Young-caliber performance if his K-rate climbs into the 8.5 range, but Beckett is still looking like a draft-day steal at this point.
3. Brennan Boesch (OF - Tigers) - Boesch is in one of his hot streaks again. He went 2-for-3 on Thursday with a HR and 2 RBI. That gives him 4 HR this month and 5 in the last 11 games. We've seen these hot and cold streaks from Boesch in the past. Even this year, Boesch went from hitting .319/.390/.451 in April to struggling with a .186/.226/.326 in May. Now in June, he's back to his April ways with a .424/.500/.848 through 8 games. He remains unowned in over 30% of leagues and deserves ownership while he's this hot.
4. Mark Buehrle (SP - White Sox) - Buehrle often gets overlooked because of low K-rates (K/9 of just 4.47 this year). However, with another decent performance on Thursday, he has now posted 8 straight QS and is 9-for-13 for the season. His ERA is a sub-4.00 as he manages through the "hit-scattering method" by posting a 1.38 WHIP despite a low BB/9 of 2.18. A low GO/AO rate of 0.83 makes me nervous at U.S. Cellular, but he has still kept his HR/9 to 0.73 . He's not going to change the landscape of your staff, but he's emerging back into a mixed league consideration if he can keep-up the QS trend.
5. Mike Moustakas (3B - Royals) - The Royals called-up hot prospect Mike Moustakas on Thursday. Another Baseball America highly rated player in the Royals organization, Moustakas was tearing it up in Triple-A. He was hitting .287 with 10 HR, an .845 OPS, and 44 RBI through 55 games. His BB/K rate has slightly declined this year from over 0.50 in 2008 and 2010 to 0.43 this season. His AB/HR rate has also declined from last year's incredible 13.4 to 22.3 this year, but I don't place too much value in the "decline" as some of those numbers reflect varying levels of the minors. Either way, Moustakas could be an immediate impact player at a weak position and should be claimed in mixed leagues. We saw what Eric Hosmer did at 1B for fantasy teams and while I don't think we'll see as big of an impact from Moustakas this year, he will hold plenty of value moving forward.
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