Player of the Week: Vinnie Pasquantino

Pasquatch comes alive

I know that there was no Player of the Week last week. I have no fancy reason why—I just forgot to do one. So it goes.

Fortunately for one Vinnie Pasquantino, I did not forget to do one this week. And the Pasquatch is our Player of the Week across the first week of June. As he deserves. Over six games and 27 plate appearances, Vinnie hit a very smooth .417/.481/.458 line, driving in six runs and scoring another pair.

Coming into the season, Vinnie’s presence was necessary for the lineup to truly thrive. Unfortunately for everyone, Vinnie was rusty and just not on his game. The Pasquatch bottomed out at .179/.239/.325 on May 2 with a career high 17.9% strikeout rate and a career low 6.7% walk rate.

Since May 3, though, Vinnie has hit .362/.408/.466, capped by his most recent week of crazy hitting. Vinnie is at his best when he’s hitting for average and getting on base, and I’m most pleased by his recent approach to take short swings and put the ball in play. The big game was, of course, last Sunday’s walkoff hit. Rather than by trying to smash the ball, Vinnie took an outside fastball the other way for a clean line drive.

I wrote about this a bit ago, but as much as Vinnie looks like big guy slugger, his ideal form is more of a left-handed Billy Butler doubles-hitting type. And he has achieved that over the last week, being a true menace to everybody. That is the way to do it, and this offense is the better for it.