It seems like every year, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a player come out of nowhere to have an All-Star caliber season, and this year it is Max Muncy.
Muncy went deep twice in Tuesday night’s 8-3 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, giving him 20 for the season, which ranks third in the National League after only perennial All-Stars Nolan Arenado of the Colorado Rockies and Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals.
Muncy did not make his season debut until the middle of April and was a part-time player to start out though, so he has around 200 fewer plate appearances than both of those players.
One person who has taken notice of how good Muncy has been is the Dodgers starting pitcher on Tuesday, Clayton Kershaw. After the game, Kershaw said that Muncy is as good as anyone in the league right now at the plate, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“We knew Max was a good hitter, but I don’t think anyone expected this,” Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw said after Muncy hit two of the Dodgers’ six home runs in an 8-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday night.
“He’s the best hitter in baseball right now. I don’t think anyone can argue with that.”
As surprising as that sounds considering there are so many good hitters in the league right now, Kershaw is not far off from being right.
Muncy does not yet have enough bats to qualify for the batting title, but once he does, his 1.069 on-base plus slugging percentage will rank third in all of baseball behind only Mookie Betts of the Boston Red Sox (1.101) and Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (1.080). He has homered in 9.2 percent of his at-bats, which is the best mark in all of baseball.
While he may not feel that he is worthy of being an All-Star yet, it’s looking more and more like Muncy could be headed to Washington D.C. in a couple weeks for his first career Midsummer classic.
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