I've been following Fangraphs writer Tony Blengino's Ball-In-Play series with interest because I love looking at this kind of stuff, and he did LF yesterday. Melky's batted ball profile from 2015 looks pretty good, he hit the ball pretty hard, especially on flyballs and line drives, had the third highest line drive rate among all LF to go along with very low K and pop up rates. The writer thinks he experienced a lot of bad luck last year and is due for a bounceback.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2015-positi...trospective-lf/

 

I wouldn’t be surprised by comeback seasons (at least with the bat) from both Melky Cabrera and Hanley Ramirez. Lots of bad luck is baked into both of their lines. Despite typically low K and pop-up rates and a typically high liner rate, Melky crash-landed in 2015. He’s still the same guy who over-performed as a Giant in 2012 and Blue Jay in 2014, and is still very capable of .340 OBP-.420 SLG seasons in the near term.

 

 

Melky, like Abreu, saw his numbers against left-handed pitching take a tumble last year. That seems to be the primary driver for his previous two bad seasons, last year and the spinal tumor year. Against righties, he's been just fine.

 

We should expect improvement from him on that front. I do, at least.

I'm hoping for at least some regression towards the mean this season. I just don't get the feeling he's done.

I would love to see second half Melky for the whole year.

Melky hit line drives all year while batting lefty. Problem was for most of the season, he lacked the power to get his line drives to go over the head of outfielders.

That 19-36 stretch Melky had during our late July winning streak was fun to watch.

So he had a nad season and had almost 80 RBI's. What would he have done in a good season

So he had a nad season and had almost 80 RBI's. What would he have done in a good season

 

Well, that would depend entirely on where he'd be batting in the order and how everyone else did around him.