Will Josh Hamilton turn Things Around?

Photo courtesy of Keith Allison.

To say that Josh Hamilton is having a disappointing season thus far would be an understatement. Frustrating as his first half has been, I think Josh has some solid power to give, and he should be better in his second half, with the possibility that he can lift his real life team and your fantasy team into contention. Even if he just reasonably betters his first half production he is still a valuable asset rest of way.

Granted, it’s not likely that he’ll reach our Draft Kit projections:

If he did reach those numbers, these are the kind of numbers that we’d be looking at from here on out:

Certainly the most feasible would be the runs, as he’s not far off of our projections right now. The least likely would be RBI, as not only would he need to heat up, but he’d be depending on runners to get on base when he does heat up.

Tracking his average, however, will BE very interesting to do for the rest of the way. To get to his projected .285 from his current .227 he would have to have 96 hits out of 273 potential at-bats, giving him a torrid .351 average over the next few months.

Those of us who have been around fantasy baseball the past six seasons have certainly seen Hamilton accomplish feats of this magnitude.  Therefore it is not inconceivable to think it is possible. Also, his batting AVG has only been below .285 once in his career. That either means that this could either be the beginning of the end for Hamilton as an elite fantasy player, OR he is in for a spectacular second half.

Hamilton is a streak hitter. As we’re seeing too well right now, he’s often injured or mired in elongated slumps. But he makes for that sizable contributions when healthy and swinging a good bat. When Hamilton is on, he can be just about the most impressive player in baseball.

Because of what we’ve seen in recent years, I just don’t see him keeping this current pace, which would give us these numbers.

As unlikely as it seems that he’ll stay down for so long, given his age and wear and tear on his body, I think we should all curb our expectations for him.

We had him projected as a Top-10 outfielder, but even our projections cited above were a small drop from what he did in 2012. While Albert Pujols and Mike Trout would theoretically be providing ample RBI chances and Mark Trumbo isn’t bad protection, Texas is a much better hitter’s park than Anaheim and while Hamilton is only 32, he’s certainly lived an interesting 32 years. In addition to his substance abuse issues, he’d only played 145 games in a season twice (156 games in 2008, 148 in 2012).

Again, given the poor first half, it’s unlikely that he’ll hit his preseason numbers, or repeat 2012. As for final numbers, I think this is a reasonable expectation for 2013:

If that does happen, this is the kind of second half that we’re looking at.

Given what Hamilton’s done in the past, that doesn’t seem too crazy, does it?