Daily Notes | Chris Young Slumping

Chris Young was hitting .410 with an OPS of 1.397 back on April 17th. The season was very young, but he was looking at a career year. Then he crashed into a wall, hurt his shoulder and had to go on the disabled list. He returned a month later and has been awful ever since. Before yesterday, he had not homered in 102 at-bats, had a .147 average, and a .433 OPS since May 18th. Perhaps he is still hurt, but Kurt Gibson made the fairly simple decision at this point to bench Young. Young did not play in the series finale against the Cubs on Sunday, the team had the day off Monday, and Young did not play on Tuesday either. Young had three days off heading into last night's game and finally came in the game as a pinch hitter in the 7th inning. He proceeded to hit his first home run since April. 

That home run is enough to keep Young on a roster for now, but he isn't far from being tossed into the waiver wire depending on the league. He has never hit for average (a career .239 hitter), but when the home runs and steals fail to come in too there are issues. To date Young has just 2 steals after stealing more than 20 each of the last two seasons. The shoulder shouldn't be forcing him to stop running, but the more likely reason that he doesn't have more steals is that he hasn't been getting on base. 

Tonight the Diamondbacks will face Jair Jurrjens and the Braves. Young is 2 for 10 with a home run off Jurrjens in his career. Other noteworthy items from around the league:

• Jurrjens will be countered by Trevor Bauer. At this point the hype machine would have you believe that Trevor is related to Jack Bauer, so it will be interesting to see what the kid brings tonight. The Diamondbacks are limiting the number of times he is allowed to speak to the media although I don't think the hype is close to what Stephen Strasburg had in Washington.
• Bartolo Colon, Brett Anderson, and Dallas Braden all had somewhat positive steps with the A's. Colon could be back before the All-Star break. Anderson threw thirty pitches yesterday and Braden threw yesterday (no timetable on Anderson or Braden though). 
• In his contract year, Michael Bourn is committed to trying to be a more complete player. He already has a career high seven home runs this season. 
• Six days after predicting Tim Lincecum's season would turn around, Lincecum has given up 3 runs in 13 innings (2.08 ERA) and actually gotten into the win column for the first time since April. It's not anything to get too worked up about since you and I could combine to shut out the Dodgers, but there was some pressure on him after Ryan Vogelsong and Barry Zito shut down the Dodgers the days before. 
• Speaking of the Dodgers, Andre Ethier left the game with a strained oblique in the first inning and could be out for weeks. What this means of course is that when they take on the Mets tonight, there is a decent chance they could be the first team in MLB history to score negative runs in a game. 
• One day after predicting that maybe Ryan Zimmerman had turned his season around, he homered again. 
• Cardinals top prospect Shelby Miller got back on track yesterday. He gave up just one hit in 5 innings of work. Miller has struggled for much of this season when most people around baseball would have thought that Miller would be up with the Cardinals by now. One thing that the team has emphasized is that Miller can't shake off any pitches.
• Wil Myers career minor league numbers compare very similarly to future teammates Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas. The ups and downs of getting to those numbers are a little different though. 
• As a manager that just traded Carlos Santana to acquire Jose Quintana, I will be the first to tell you that Santana has not met expectations this season. Santana was lifted for a pinch hitter in the 9th inning in the Dewayne Wise game because of back tightness.
• Andrew Cashner will start for the Padres Thursday night against the Astros. It's worth watching for deep leagues in desperate need of pitching. Cashner was very good in three starts at Double-A.