Charlie Blackmon swears there’s nothing unusual happening to him at the plate. Nothing to see here — all those National League-best numbers recently are a natural progression.
“I don’t necessarily feel locked in. That’s just how baseball goes sometimes,” he said last week.
But Blackmon’s recent streak certainly is noteworthy. On Monday he was named the NL player of the week after he led all of baseball with five home runs, 14 hits and 30 total bases last week. His nine RBIs in the past seven days were tied for the major-league lead. And he ranked first in slugging percentage (.909), second in runs (nine), eighth in batting average (.424) and ninth in on-base percentage (.472).
He’s also on a seven-game hitting streak — and in six of those games, Blackmon had multiple hits.
“If somebody gets on near the top of the order, we have a really good chance to score runs,” Blackmon said. In those seven games, the Rockies went 4-3 and scored 56 runs (8.0 runs per game).
“I give a lot of credit to DJ for that,” Blackmon said, speaking of second baseman DJ LeMahieu, who follows him in the batting order. “He’s a really good handler of the bat. And then (Carlos Gonzalez) is getting hot, and when CarGo is hot, he can be better than anybody.”
Blackmon is hitting .304 this season, sixth-best among NL outfielders. He beat out, among others, LeMahieu for the NL player of the week award. LeMahieu last week hit .448 with six runs, 13 hits and four RBIs and had a .515 OBP.
