MLB: Five Hitters Likely to Hit Worse in the Second Half

Aledmys Diaz, St. Louis Cardinals

.315/.380/.536, .915 OPS, .329 BABIP—Current stats

.315/.380/.536, .915 OPS, .329 BABIP—Career stats

.272/.326/.432, .758 OPS, .303 BABI—Projection

Before making his big league debut with the Cardinals this year, Aledmys Diaz had hit .270/.321/.429 in two minor league seasons spent mostly in AA. In the first half of his first season in the Major Leagues, Diaz is doing everything better than he did in the minor leagues. As you can imagine, this is unusual and not likely to continue.

One of the more interesting statistics for Diaz this year has been his 21 infield hits. He has an infield hit percentage of 18.6%, which is the best in baseball. The league average is 6.2%. If Diaz had a league average infield hit percentage, his BABIP would drop from .329 to .272.

Diaz was a surprise starter at shortstop for the Cardinals at the start of the year because of the spring training injury to incumbent Jhonny Peralta. Diaz got off to a blazing hot start. He was hitting .423/.453/.732 at the end of April and was still in the .370s in mid-May.

Through his first 44 games, Diaz hit .352/.386/.599. He has cooled down since, which was expected, but has still hit .281/.374/.477 over his last 44 games and he’s done that with a .303 BABIP. He’s also held on to the shortstop position, with Peralta moving to third base when he came off the DL and Matt Carpenter playing second base. Kolten Wong was the odd man out and was sent to the minors.

Carpenter is now on the DL, so Wong is back at second base and Diaz continues to man the shortstop position. This will continue to be the defensive alignment as long as Matt Carpenter is on the DL. Carpenter should be back at some point in August. If Diaz continues to hit, he’ll stay at short, Peralta will stick at third, and Carpenter will play second. If Diaz slows down and Wong starts to hit better, Diaz could lose some playing time in the second half.

Next: The emerging outfielder