Ryan Schimpf?

Phil Gurnee ♦ July 8, 2016 ♦ Leave a comment

I pride myself on not only knowing every major league baseball player but most of the players expected to play in the major leagues, so when the Padres called up 28-year-old Ryan Schimpf, I had the same reaction that just about everyone else had. Who?

Every year a few minor league journeyman get lucky enough through injuries and what not to make their long-anticipated major league debut.  Schimpf had over 3,000 minor league at-bats before getting his chance and has made the most of it.

It is always fun for me to check out who the hottest hitters in baseball are. I normally use Fangraphs and their seven-day split to check these guys out. I knew Wilmer Flores, CJ Cron,  and Danny Espinosa had been making some noise, but I’ll admit, that Schimpf was flying under my radar. I had noticed him, but hadn’t really noticed him.

Over the past seven days, Schimpf has hit four home runs, and three doubles. That is a nice XBH per game.  Which is even more awesome because he only has eight hits.

The Padres clobbered the Dodgers 6 – 0 last night and it should not have been unexpected. The names might surprise you but the Padre offense is in high gear. Solarte, Schimpf, Alex Dickerson, and Derrick Norris are all red hot now. Add in All-Star and player of the month for June  Wil Myers, and you have a lineup that for the short term is on a feeding frenzy.

Myers set a franchise record with 11 June homers — tying him with the Cubs’ Kris Bryant for the NL lead. He batted .327/.529/.765 while equaling a franchise mark with 21 extra-base hits in a single month.

Past 7 days:

Name	wRC+	PA	HR	RBI	OBP	SLG
Yangervis Solarte	266	31	3	10	0.484	0.893
Ryan Schimpf	237	27	4	6	0.37	0.92
Alex Dickerson	199	18	1	5	0.389	0.75
Wil Myers	176	32	1	4	0.438	0.571
Derek Norris	130	24	1	6	0.375	0.5

Past 14 days:

Name	wRC+	PA	HR	RBI	OBP	SLG
Yangervis Solarte	231	52	3	11	0.481	0.745
Wil Myers	199	56	3	14	0.464	0.644
Ryan Schimpf	176	36	4	6	0.333	0.719
Alex Dickerson	156	27	1	5	0.37	0.583
Melvin Upton Jr.	151	49	5	9	0.306	0.638

You will notice Matt Kemp is not on this list. Kemp had a solid June, but did most of his good work in June in the early part of the month. I only listed  the top five but to get to Kemp I’d have to go deeper than ten. Kemp has been very unproductive over the past fourteden days, making it even harder for the Padres to move his albatross contract to make room for Hunter Renfroe.

This may have been bad timing for the Frankstein rotation to face one of the hottest offenses in baseball.