This Week in Astros Hitting

If you've been sleeping this week, you would have missed a lot of good things about the Astros, especially on hitting. Chris Johnson keeps telling me how wrong I am. Chris Snyder finally showed off some of the power we saw in spring training. Jed Lowrie might be is the most interesting shortstop in the world. And while I might have just made that up, Sr. Escorpión has really been thrashing at baseballs lately, which is no lie.

Who's been smoking hot lately?

:) Chris Johnson, 2 HR, 3 2B, 3 1B, 2 BB (non intentional!), .471 BA, .526 OBP, 1.000 SLG, 1.526 OPS

:) Jed Lowrie, 2 HR, 2 2B, 7 1B, 4 BB, .524 BA, .600 OBP, .905 SLG, 1.505 OPS (Pretty good from a SS)

Who's been slumping?

:( J.D. Martinez, 2 1B, .105 BA, .261 OBP, .105 SLG, .366 OPS (23 plate appearances, yuck!)

Who's been improving?

:) Brian Bogusevic has a .353 batting average in his last 7 games with 6 singles, 1 double, and a walk

:) Chris Snyder hit his first home run as an Astro this week.

:) Jordan Schafer, after going for a prolonged hitting slump, but still got on base at a good clip is starting to hit again with 5 hits in 16 at-bats with 2 walks.

Who's been stable?

:) Jose Altuve has kept up with production and has a .308 BA, .333 OBP, .462 SLG, .795 OPS in the last 7 games.

:) Travis Buck has a .300 BA, .417 OBP, .400 SLG, .817 OPS in the past 7 games with 3 singles, 1 double, and a walk.

Among the things this week in regards to offensive performance that has been surprising to me has been Chris Johnson. I suppose he's upset with my dislike for him as a player, but that may change if he keeps up his good defense lately and can hit for power on a somewhat consistent basis. He's a linedrive type of a hitter and has had career BABIPs higher than league averages. From my understanding, the league BABIP on linedrives is greater than the league BABIPs on flyballs and groundballs.

J.D. Martinez has really been doing poorly in this small stretch of games. He's still showing his superior ability to take a walk, but that ghastly OPS of his is disturbing. It is, however, a small sample size and he should get out of his mini-slump fairly quickly. Don't worry about it.