It has been a roller coaster ride for his owners. What can you expect going forward?? A big rebound.(Ed Note: The day after this post BaseballHQ did their own look at Kinsler. I guess they are reading this blog!) It has been a roller coaster for Kinsler this year. After a very hot April, he has cooled down considerably. What can we expect going forward?? Here are his monthly splits:

April: 9 HR 22 RBI 4 SB .298/.379/.667
May: 1 HR 5 RBI 3 SB .174/.248/.278
June: 3 HR 5 RBI 4 SB .242/.338/.452

Forget Jekyll and Hyde, he has been Bonds and Neifi Perez. The surprise is that he was a model of consistency last year after May:

June: .253/.322/.443
July .293/.358/.434
Aug: .273/.328/.373
September: .267/.327/.444

The difference?? Merely statistical variation, or “bad luck.” In 2006 his contact rates ranged from 81% to 87% in the months above. In 2007, they have been 85%, 79% and 90% respectively. This variation in contact rate has led to a large swing in hit rate, which is currently at a piddling 23%, after being a lofty 35% in April.

As it turns out, so far he has been very unlucky in this department. There was a lot of “Chris Shelton” talk about Kinsler last month. However look for a big rebound. He has a very solid 0.76 K/BB ratio, and is walking in 11% of his PAs, and hitting fly balls in 49% of appearances when he puts the ball in play. This should give him some big power numbers. Normally, the average player hits approximately 37% of his batted ball in the air. Hitting home runs is largely a function of how many balls you hit in the air; usually around 10% will go out of the park.

With a contact rate in the 80s, and a solid walk rate (see my post on Understanding Batting Average) he should be able to hit .280 and that power is real. The totality of the above augurs quite well, and I am looking for a big rebound, and soon. Since he is on my high stakes team, I am sure hoping for it to be sooner rather than later.