The improvement of Bartlett and Kubel
I'm a little late for a full recap of Saturday nights game. It was a good one for the Twins bats and Carlos Silva, with his early run support, was able to settle in for a nice seven innings of pitching. The one thing I wanted to take a closer look at was two guys who fans have had mixed feelings about so far this season: Jason Kubel and Jason Bartlett.
Kubel had 3 hits in the game and Bartlett tied Joe Mauer for the team lead in RBIs. While neither of these guys' numbers look spectacular right now, there has been steady improvement from both of them and sometimes the season stats continue to make players look like complete failures.
Jason Bartlett
Bartlett started off the season in an ugly 1 for 21 slump, but if you look at the monthly splits:
| AVG | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | .239 | .316 | .296 |
| May | .243 | .349 | .284 |
| June | .268 | .339 | .339 |
Jason Kubel
Kubel certainly doesn't look like Babe Ruth, but his power is starting show a little bit in June.
| AVG | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | .261 | .288 | .348 |
| May | .220 | .297 | .366 |
| June | .293 | .326 | .537 |
Interleague play has limited his playing time in June, but as you can see, his numbers have been good enough that he should be in the lineup every day.
Update: See Joe Christensen's latest for an update on Morneau. It appears he may not fly back with the team.
Topics: Jason Kubel, Jason Bartlett, Carlos Silva, Joe Mauer