It’s been one of those days… random… so I’m continuing that with this piece.

Brett Anderson leads baseball with a 67.1 percent ground ball rate. Dallas Keuchel is second (64.2) and Tyson Ross (62.3) is third. Anderson and DK have K-rate in the 6’s while Ross is way up at 9.93 per nine. Felix Hernandez is at 60.2 percent with his 8.93 K/9 mark. Ross is the only one with a walk rate over 2.75. It sits at 4.69 per nine.

Charlie Blackmon is a limited player but he’s been pretty productive the last month. Over 30 games Blackmon scored 21 runs and stole 10 bases. Unfortunately he hit only .236 in that time.

Kris Bryant is batting .296 the last 25 games. Only three homers though. Where’s the power Kris? Hell, Matt Duffy has five the last 30 days.

Francisco Cervelli deserves some props. Over the last two weeks he’s hitting .353 with a .463 OBP. IT’s way more than that though. On the year he’s batting .324 with a .404 OBP. Among catchers with at least 100 plate appearances this year none can match those two numbers. Hell, none even has a .390 OBP.

You can cheat at All-Star voting, and it’s easy to do.

I’m sorry, but this is just funny as all get out.  

Chi Chi Gonzalez has a 0.90 ERA through four starts. If you’re looking him up his name is actually Alex Gonzalez. A first round draft pick in 2013, Chi Chi also has a 1.00 WHIP. Love it. Still, a 3.60 BB/9 rate blows chunks. A 3.00 K/9 rate is putrid. One homer allowed in 30 innings… yeah, you know what to do.

Eric Hosmer has no homers the past month while OBP and SLG marks both in the .280’s. Terrible. But come on. I had someone on Twitter ask me if he was “done.” He’s still on pace to go .294-19-95-90-8. Yeah he stinks.

Joe Mauer is batting .207 with a .279 OBP the past 30 days. Wow, he’s really just lost it. Shocking.

Alexei Ramirez leads all shortstops with seven steals the last 30 days. Jose Reyes has six. Ramirez is batting .215 in that time while Reyes is at .315. Reyes also has 14 RBIs in that time Alexei seven.

Terry Francona couldn’t help when Michael Bourn was being ejected Tuesday. Why? He was evacuating his bladder, though he might have made a little bit of a mistake as he tried to rush to help Bourn.

Chris Sale leads baseball with an 11.71 K/9 mark. There are three others over 11: Clayton Kershaw (11.59), Danny Salazar (11.40) and Chris Archer (11.30). Are those numbers more surprising than the 10.43 mark of Mike Fiers? Anyone notice that the Indians have THREE starters in the top-10 with Carlos Carrasco (10.34) and Corey Kluber (10.33) rounding out the top-10.

Over his last five starts Michael Pineda has a 5.40 ERA and a 1.62 WHIP. The strikeout rate is well down at 7.62 per nine as well. Still sporting an insane 8.67 K/BB ratio with more than a strikeout per inning, and that 1.83 GB/FB ratio is still impressive. Gotta think that .352 BABIP comes down a bit, but I’m not sure his ERA is going to appreciably fall moving forward (3.74 ERA). 

 

 

 

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday at 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 7 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).