| 30 June 2010
Adrian Beltre went 4-4 last night in an 8-5 win over the Rays.
He's now hitting .349 on the season.
With the injury bug running through the Red Sox clubhouse like the Black Plague, Beltre has remained a consistent source of offense for his team. Ortiz lead the team in dingers with 17, but Beltre and Youkilis have been the 1-2 punch that has kept this team in the thick of things this year.
Adrian leads the Sox in RBI with 52, ranks third in homers with 12 and trails Pedroia by one double at 23 on the season, but the stats that have me shocked are the .349 BA and the .948 OPS.
In 2004, Beltre posted similar numbers and displayed even more power with 48 home runs, but his career BA is .274 and is career OPS is a modest .786.
So the question is: When is Adrian Beltre going to come back to earth?
A look at his stats on Fagraphs shows that he's walking and whiffing as often as he always has, but his line drive percentage is up a few ticks to 23.6% and his flyball rate is down a few points to 34.7%. Unfortunately, all that tells us is that Adrian is "seeing the ball" really well right now - which is more cliche than helpful.
In similar fashion, Beltre is hitting pitches outside of the strikezone at a 70% clip - up 10% from his career average. That also means he's seeing tha ball well, but perhaps we shouldn't dismiss all of this as simply cliche. The Red Sox are nationaly known for their emphasis on plate discipline... maybe hanging out with guys like Youk, Pedey and Scutaro is simply rubbing off on him.
Right now, there's no reason to belive Beltre won't orbit the planet for the rest of the summer and earn himself a rocketship full of cash in the offseason, but even if he went 1-4 in his next 50 games (or 50 for his next 200 AB) he's still be batting .307 come September.
Bottom Line: If you can tell me that you knew in April that he'd be this good, I'll give you my rocketship full of cash.
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