Three weeks ago, I wrote about Joe Mauer's awful April, offering the caveat that while his performance had dipped dramatically even from his disappointing 2014-16 seasons, he also was hitting into some bad luck when considering his hard-hit rate actually was higher than his career average while his batting average on balls in play was only .243.
I was curious to see if Mauer's numbers would trend upward in May as long as he kept hitting the ball hard while getting some better luck.
Three weeks into the month, the answer is yes.
Mauer entered Monday with at least one hit in every game he started in May (13 games total). He entered the month with a .225 batting average and a .546 OPS. This month, though, his batting average (.320), on-base percentage (.424), slugging percentage (.500) and OPS (.924) are all vintage Mauer — the good kind, not the recent kind.
Read Michael Rand's blog at startribune.com/randball. mrand@startribune.com
