Every day this season, our team will share who we believe has the best chance to leave the yard. We’re calling it the “Dinger of the Day”. From one-off plays to core parts of daily stacks, we hope this fun article will help you build winning lineups along the way.
Today’s Picks
James: Aaron Judge – “Tarik Skubal has been better at keeping the ball in the ballpark in May, but still has allowed 13 homers on the year and five this month. Skubal suffers from leaning on his 4-seam fastball too much, as he throws it nearly 54% of the time. This would be fine if it wasn’t being absolutely smashed as it is being slugged at a .652 clip and a .315 batting average. Add in the fact that Skubal’s flyball percentage is around 34% and he is in the bottom 2% of the league for limiting barreled balls, and we have a pitcher who is on home run watch every start. 12 of the 13 home runs against Skubal have been allowed to right-handed hitters and Aaron Judge has five home runs against lefties in just 61 at-bats this year. Judge is slugging .720 against LHP and slugging fastballs at a .722 clip. So we have a lefty pitcher, who throws fastballs more than half the time (poorly), and allows hard contact to righties against a righty, who mashes left-handed pitching and fastballs. Take me home, Aaron Judge.”
Zach: Jose Abreu – “I don’t know much about Keegan Akin. In fact, I never heard of the man until I looked up the starting pitchers for today’s slate. What I do know about Akin is he is left-handed and allows a lot of hard contact with an average launch angle of 17.8-degrees in his career. That is honestly all I need to know to target White Sox players against him. Abreu is my favorite of the White Sox players as he is hitting the ball really well over the past two weeks. In that time frame, Abreu is slugging .600 with three home runs. Abreu also has the impressive Statcast numbers that I look for during that time frame with an average exit velocity of 92.2 miles per hour and a 14.8% barrel rate.”
Jared: Andrew Vaughn – “Talk about a guy really establishing himself as a split monster vs LHP, and in a situation where he should be rostered in a very high percentage of lineups. Vaughn and the White Sox get a young lefty who has not had a smooth start to his MLB career – a split they absolutely destroy to the tune of a .359 wOBA team mark on the year. Vaughn’s splits vs LHP are definitely something to write home about. He’s a hair behind Abreu for the team lead in the ISO (.385) department, and actually has stronger numbers then the franchise 1B in wOBA, hard contact rate and even line drive rate (.448, 48.1%, 29.6%). Even if he doesn’t leave the yard, this is a great situation for him to have a big day (along with the rest of the White Sox offense).”
Overall Standings
| James | 8 |
| Zach | 8 |
| Jared | 17 |
