Fantasy Baseball: Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Keon Broxton starting to heat up
By Jason Burke
The Milwaukee Brewers handed the Boston Red Sox an 11-7 loss at Miller Park on Tuesday, and outfielder Keon Broxton led the charge. It’s time he charged into you fantasy baseball lineup, too.
The Milwaukee Brewers have been playing well a little over a month into the season, sitting at 17-16, one game over .500. While he was relatively silent throughout the month of April, Keon Broxton has come alive in the season’s second month, and his best game of the year was Tuesday night against Boston. This could be the time that you need to pick up Broxton for your fantasy baseball team to capitalize on a hot streak, and perhaps maybe a bit more.
When the month began, Broxton was batting .191 with a .276 OBP, one home run, three driven in, six steals and eleven runs scored. So far in May he’s hitting .476 with a .542 OBP, two homers, six driven in, two steals and five runs scored. With last night’s 3-for-3 performance that included a home run, a triple and four runs batted in, Broxton has elevated his batting average to a much more respectable .258 and his OBP is an impressive .340.
Depending on your league’s settings, Broxton could be a big contributor both in the short and long term. Where his stats sit right now is basically in line with his career averages (.245 AVG, .348 OBP), so if on-base percentage is something that your league accounts for, then you can probably look past the slightly lower batting average.
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The fact that he adds stolen bases is a big add as well, while he’ll be putting up decent power that will likely hover between 15-20 homers this year.
In ESPN leagues Broxton is owned in just 23.4% of leagues, meaning that he’s likely available for you to scoop up.
The Brewers have the eighth-best run producing team in baseball, play in a hitter’s park, and have a nice mix of speed and power throughout the lineup to keep that train a movin’. The one caveat for right now would be that Broxton was batting 7th in last night’s game, and has seen the most starts at that position in the lineup to begin the season. Even so, he managed a solid performance against the Red Sox yesterday, but he is hitting behind the power hitters in Ryan Braun and Eric Thames, and in front of Orlando Arcia, who is still finding his way at the plate in the big leagues.
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There are reasons to be skeptical of Broxton, but if he continues to eat up opposing pitching, there is a chance that the Brew Crew could move him to the top of the lineup to supplant Jonathan Villar, who is batting just .200 with a .584 OPS so far. If Broxton were to move up to the top of the lineup, he could become an absolute must-own. For now, we’ll just say that it would be a good idea to pick him up.