April 20, 2016

Upton Funk is Up

Melvin Upton doubled and drew three walks in the Padres 5-4 defeat of the Pirates Tuesday night. That gives him a .298/.377/.511 slash line for the season. That is a vast improvement over his three terrible offensive seasons of 2012-2014, and expands on his small sample size uptick of 2015.

Two things stand out when I look at Upton’s stats for 2016. The first is his BABIP is similar to 2015, but he’s striking out much less. The same BABIP with fewer K leads to a higher batting average. He’s also walking a little more, and that helps drive up his OBP. All that suggests better plate discipline.

The second thing is that Upton has not popped up the ball in 2016. With his line drive percentage very high, it suggests to me that somehow he leveled his swing. Instead of getting under the ball, he’s hitting it square. I wonder if he did something with his eyes, Lasik surgery or new contact lenses. Whatever he figured out, it’s working, and right now he’s the hitter he was back in 2007.

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