Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Situation report: The Infield

Geovany Soto remains my hottest hitter; a blessing in that it's hard to get .500 OBP and SLG out of the catcher slot, and a curse in that it means the guy hitting 8th in an NL lineup is my most productive infielder.  On the season he has only 8 RBIs, which is two more than Chipper Jones (batting 3rd) and one less than Brandon Phillips (who spent most of the season as the Reds cleanup hitter).  While his hitting has cooled off lately, he's still walking (19 walks in 21 games) and I'm happy to let him be my on-base sponge while I wait to see what Carlos Santana turns into.

To loosely paraphrase some random fantasy writer I read recently but can't recall, somebody told Mark Texeira it was May.  His line in the past week is .333/.438/.407 with four runs and three RBI, which is..still shitty for basically my second round keeper, but demonstrates marked improvement.  I can't find an online repository of LOB statistics but I'd be willing to bet Mark's pretty high on the list this year.  If he can start knocking in runs and stop ending innings, I'll stop despairing.

Brandon Phillips and Chipper Jones are bad.  Despite a .355 OBP last week, that puts Brandon at .312 on the season.  He's not running or hitting or scoring or knocking in runs.  He's just ensuring I get a pretty decent draft pick next year.  Chipper meanwhile had exactly one hit last week.  His line ten games ago was .293/.431/.537, but now it's .206/.372/.353.  So far this season he's strained his ribs, pulled an oblique, and is currently playing through hip pain.  In about five weeks he'll run out of non-comedic body parts to injure.

Stephen Drew is hitting!  He's maintaining a rather consistent .289/.361/.474 by creatively managing his success against RHP (.329 BA) against strategic awfulness versus LHP (.143 BA) so that he never gets too good, out of respect to his brother JD.  That Stephen, always taking one for the team (unless "one" is a walk, or "team" is the Diamondbacks).  It's at least enough that I'm comfortable dropping Escobar to acquire this week's waiver wire stud David Freese, whose hip isn't constructed of balled-up newspaper and might actually drive in some runs this summer if Chipper Jones can't.

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