Club OK with Luplow’s average
Last year, Jordan Luplow hit .202. This year, he’s hitting .183 through 93 at-bats.
It is, on the surface, neither a good number nor a good trend. But it also obfuscates Luplow’s impact. His OPS is .782 — 19% better than the major league average. And despite only having 108 plate appearances, he’s second on the Diamondbacks with nine home runs.
Luplow says it’s that first part — being a part-time player — that explains his profile over the past two seasons, when he’s balanced out a sub-par .312 on-base percentage with an excellent .469 slugging percentage.
“I’m not playing as much, I don’t get those consistent at-bats so it’s hard to catch a rhythm,” Luplow said. “It’s hard to catch those bloop hits, bleed hits. It’s just part of the role and just kinda happens.”
Of course, Luplow would like to replicate his 2019 season, when he slashed .276/.372/.551 in a similar platoon role with the then-Cleveland Indians. But he’s also okay with the impact he’s brought to the Diamondbacks, both when he starts — which typically happens against lefties — and when he comes off the bench.
“Obviously, I’m trying to do damage,” Luplow said. “I like doubles and I like homers. That’s kinda my game. If I got to be in a rhythm and feel out pitchers a little more and see more live breaking balls and whatnot, maybe I can kinda shift my focus for the day. But since I have those limited opportunities, I go with my favorite approach and that’s what it is.”
It’s a shift, Luplow said, that originated in his work with a hitting coach prior to the 2017 season.
In his first three seasons in the minors after being drafted by the Pirates in the third round in 2014, he struggled to separate himself from the pack, consistently getting on base but never posting a slugging percentage over .464. As a result, he had never played above High-A prior to 2017. But after retooling his swing to hit more fly balls, he slugged .527 in the minors that year, working his way up to the majors.
Since then, Luplow has only gotten more power-heavy. Standing beside his locker Saturday afternoon, he indulged in a little bit of game theory, explaining everything that has to go right for small-ball to turn into a run. Homers, on the other hand? “Every time you hit a homer, it’s an automatic point,” Luplow said. As obvious as that is, it lends a window into his mindset. In Luplow’s words, “Who doesn’t want to hit homers?”
The Diamondbacks have encouraged that approach, which paid dividends in Friday’s 7-2 win over the Twins. Each of the first two times Luplow came up, he homered to left. Both shots gave the Diamondbacks the lead.
“Several of the home runs have helped us win baseball games,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “That, to me, is the bottom line. He understands what the at-bat is asking for.”
Although Lovullo did note that he would “love to see (Luplow) hit for a better average,” he described his overall stats through two months as a “great line.”
“He’s walking up there to do damage,” Lovullo said. “And I have no problem with that.”
Marte update
Second baseman Ketel Marte has a Grade 1 lateral hamstring strain, manager Torey Lovullo said, adding that the injury is “very, very mild” and that Marte is not expected to need a stint on the injured list.
“We’re just going to take this day-today,” Lovullo said. “It was real encouraging news.”
Marte underwent an MRI on Friday after feeling tightness in his hamstring running the bases on Wednesday afternoon. He was out of the lineup for the second consecutive game and is not expected to start on Sunday, either.
“We feel like he’s going to be available to be in the lineup at some point in the San Diego series,” Lovullo said.
Marte suffered strains in both his left and right hamstrings last season, missing a month or more for each injury.
Moving on up
Lovullo moved Alek Thomas into the No. 2 spot in the order on Saturday, the first time the rookie center fielder has hit higher than sixth in his month-plus in the majors.
Lovullo, hesitant to put too much pressure on them, tends to err on the side of caution with where he hits young players in the batting order. He said he and his coaching staff had been discussing moving Thomas up for several days.
“He’s one of our more productive hitters,” Lovullo said. “You want those types of hitters hitting at the top of your lineup, getting the most at-bats, setting it up for the rest of the group. It’s easy for me to do that because of what he’s given me. So it’s a credit to him.”
Thomas, who entered the day with a nine-game hitting streak in which he has gone 13 for 33 (.394) with five walks, is hitting .276/.338/.447 through 123 at-bats.
“I don’t want to overwhelm him and give him too much responsibility so I may back him in and out of there when the lineup calls for that,” Lovullo said. “But he’s done a wonderful job. We don’t want anything to change just cause he’s hitting second versus seventh or eighth. Just go out and do what you do best.”