Justin Upton had one of his more productive days on the year, going 4-for-5 with 2 RBI and 2 runs scored. It's been a disappointing season for Upton, who sported an OPS of just .784 entering yesterday. The cause of which is simple; he's pounding the ball into the ground 43% of the time, the most since 2012. Unsurprisingly, his ISO is the lowest its been since 2012. Upton still has the talent to put up solid numbers, but he needs to make a swing adjustment to get the ball in the air more to start returning to 137 wRC+ player he was last year.
On a night when his team scored 8 runs, Yoan Moncada was hitless, though he did walk twice, raising his OBP to .309 on the year. Lots of folks, including some analysts here, are bullish on a Moncada breakout second half. It could happen, as evidenced by his Hard% of 38.4%, but he's just not making contact enough. I'd guess he needs a bit of a change of approach at the plate; sacrifice some of that hard hitting for a bit more contact, particularly if he's batting leadoff. Time will tell.
Dylan Covey continued his poor stretch of pitching, allowing 6 ER in just 4.2 innings yesterday. He struck out 2, but allowed 2 HR. Covey started the year on fire, but is now as irrelevant in fantasy as you can be, as his ERA is over 5 (along with his peripherals) and his K rate is embarrassingly low. He does induce a crazy amount of groundballs (57%), but that doesn't cut the mustard at the major league level. Obviously avoid in all formats.
Nick Tropeano picked up the win yesterday in about as ugly a fashion as possible. He went 6.1 innings allowing 5 ER on.. get this.. FIVE home runs! His HR/FB rate was 83% on the day. The stat line is almost laughable, unless you started Tropeano yesterday. It could have been a much worse outing (obviously). His stats for the year leave a lot to be desired; he's best left on the waiver wire, despite picking up the win yesterday.
After heating up the last month, Jackie Bradley Jr. was 0-for-4 yesterday, including the game ending strikeout with the bases loaded in a one run game. Not to mention, he had a 2-0 count at the time. This is the fourth consecutive season that we've seen Bradley regress at the plate, making him not only a poor fantasy option, but also potentially a poor MLB option - even despite his excellent defense. Bradley is batting just .207 for the year; the good news is that he should regress forward from there, but the bad news is, regression will only get him to about .240.
