Triston Casas went 1-for-4 at the plate Tuesday. Casas is having a monster July with a .340/.441/.740 slash line and five homers. His July numbers have taken his season totals up to reasonable levels, with a .814 OPS and 14 homers. While the strikeouts are a bit high up over 25%, his 14% walk-rate is up with the best in baseball and he's also barreling balls at a rate that is up there with the league's best. He's an excellent buy semi-low at this point if you can get him based on the season long stats.
Domingo German was crushed by the Mets with six earned runs allowed over six inning, but did punch out nine batters. He allowed three homers in the game that was the tough part for him and made the line go sour fast. What's very interesting though, he's now struck out nine batters in four of his last five starts after recording nine or more in just one start prior to this stretch. He has been taking advantage of some poorer offenses with the A's, Cubs, Trout-less Angels, and the Mets with this strikeout run with the Orioles being the only team to keep him under that threshold. German has been using his changeup more in recent starts and for the year his changeup has been his second-best pitch in terms of swing and miss (31.9%), trailing only his curveball at 38.5%.
Tyler Glasnow tossed another gem on Tuesday, allowing just one run over seven innings. He picked up the win and pushed his season record to 4-3 with a 3.36 ERA. Glasnow has been dialed in recently with over seven strikeouts in each of his last seven starts, and the lowest he's K'd in a single start this year is six. Over 31.1 innings in July, he's struck out 43 batters and allowed two or fewer runs in each of his last four outings. Glasnow has long been one of my favorite pitchers in baseball and it's great to see him having immediately returned to his elite form in quick fashion. He's running one of the elite strikeout rates in all of baseball and the only knock on him is that when batters are making contact they are doing a good bit of damage, shown in his hard-hit rate and his xwoBACON being among the worst in baseball this season. One of the biggest bumps for Glasnow's value is him working deeper into games, clearing six innings in each of his last three starts after previously only throwing a full six innings once in his first nine starts of the season.
Pete Alonso had a huge game on Tuesday, going 3-for-4 at the plate and launched a pair of homers and drove in five runs. Alonso's month of just has seen him hit just .222 but still has a .843 OPS for the month with his .351 OBP and .492 slugging percentage. He only has seven extra base hits for the month though with three doubles and a triple to go with four homers. Since June though he only has 13 homers after having nine alone in the first month of the season and 10 in May. He's up to 28 homers for the whole season and he has a .820 OPS which is perfectly solid. This month has been a nice bounce back for his OBP this month after the month of June was awful for him and he dealt with a minor wrist injury after being hit by a pitch.
Trevor Story could return to the Red Sox this weekend according to Alex Cora, and the trade of Kiké Hernandez Tuesday makes that possibility even more realistic. Hernandez was dealt to the Dodgers for a pair of pitchers. Story started his rehab assignment in AA and has already moved up to AAA, scheduled to DH on Wednesday and play shortstop again on Thursday. Story went 2-for-8 in AA with a homerun and made a few nice plays at SS that circulated around Twitter. He's going to be the primary SS for the team once he's activated and he currently only as second base eligibility, so he'll be dual eligible here shortly into August. He should provide a nice blend of power/speed over the second half of the season but we likely won't see the average numbers he was putting up in Colorado.
