Dan Uggla has had his ups... |
And it's easy to forget now, but Uggla got off to a terrible start. And I'm not talking a couple weeks or even a month (or two). He wasn't walking. His ground balls weren't finding holes. His fly balls weren't clearing the fences. The calendar flipped to May, then June, then July, and he still wasn't hitting.
...And his downs |
On the morning of July 5th, he was hitting .173/.241/.327. Now that's Adam Dunn bad right there, the kind of terrible you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Sure, his .187 BABIP screamed unlucky, and he was still on pace for 23 home runs, but a year that began with so much promise had turned into a nightmare throughout spring and early summer. Luckily for him, the Braves were winning and fellow underperformers Dunn, Carl Crawford, and Jayson Werth drew plenty of criticism for their own disastrous seasons, but Uggla was still cut from many a fantasy squad and seemed to have no hope of recovering his prolific power stroke.
That same day, he went 2-2 with a double and a big fly against the Rockies. He proceeded to get at least one hit in each of his next 32 games to craft one of the most unlikely, improbable (he is the only player in the modern era to still be hitting under .200 at the end of a 20 game hit streak) 33 game hit streaks in baseball history. Over the course of the streak he batted a scorching .377/.438/.762 and cranked 15 long balls. Of course, his brutal first half meant that his batting average at the end of the streak was a very Danny Espinosa like .232, but in a little more than a month he had managed to salvage his season.
He earned NL player of the month honors for August and, after five crazy months, has finally settled down in September. The rollercoaster ride seems to have finally leveled out, for now. He has neither slumped nor streaked during the month and recently smacked his 35th home run of the season, tying him with Matt Kemp and putting him just one behind Albert Pujols for the league.
Heck, with one more power binge he could make Talented Mr. Roto's bold prediction a reality.
But his season isn't over yet; the Braves still need Uggla to produce over the next week if they want to hold on to their slim wild card lead and make the playoffs. October baseball is unchartered territory for Uggla, who has yet to play in the postseason.
The question is; which Uggla will show up?
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