Philadelphia Phillies: John Mayberry Jr's Hot Streak Shows His Potential

What has gotten into John Mayberry Jr.?

Since he was called back up to the majors on July 5, he has been batting .316 with two home runs and seven RBI.

To put this in perspective, for the entire season, including this hot July, he is batting .252 with five home runs and 24 RBI.

He has played in 51 games so far this season.

To give you some averages, his batting average is obviously .252, his average number of home runs per game is approximately 0.10, and he drives in an average of 0.47 runs per game.

If these averages were representative of how he is performing right now, then in the six games that Mayberry has been back in the major leagues, his batting average during this stretch should be .252, and he should have hit 0.6 home runs and driven in 2.82 runs.

The actual statistics exceeded these averages by a large margin.

Obviously, I realize that fractional statistics like these are impossible. He would either hit zero, one, two, etc., home runs.

One possible reason that he has exceeded these averages is that he is simply hot right now. Players have hot streaks all of the time, so Mayberry may just be on a roll.

Another possible reason is that he is perhaps maturing as a hitter. Sometimes, it does take a player being sent down to Triple-A for him to really regain his swing.

I will not deny that he is hot right now. I'm not sure, however, that he can necessarily keep this up for a very long amount of time.

I do, though, think that this streak definitely shows that Mayberry has a lot of potential.

He was a first-round pick, so that never really was a surprise, but maybe it's finally coming to light.