Little Big Man: Brian Roberts Is a One Man Wrecking Ball in August

As I've often said (too often with this team...), when the Baltimore Orioles are limping towards another losing season and another last place finish, it's time to focus on the individual accomplishments.

Brian Roberts is the man to be watching as August winds down.

Roberts hit his 47th double against the Chicago White Sox yesterday and as I noted last week, Roberts is bearing down on his own club record of 51 doubles in a season. But that's only half of the story.

The other half is that Roberts is crushing the ball in every way during the month of August. He's putting up a line of .360/.439/.698 with 11 doubles and six home runs! Roberts hit eight in April 2005, but he's never come close to that kind of home run production since...until now.

Slugging .698 is amazing. The slugging numbers in particular are fun as it appears that Roberts is building steam. For the last 28 days, he's slugging .654. For the last 21 days, he's hitting .698. Over the last two weeks, .836 and last week, he slugged 1.000! That's sick power.

That's a .338 ISO in August. For reference, Albert Pujols leads the majors (by a good margin) with a .349 ISO for the season. The next best season ISO is Mark Reynolds at .312.

The Orioles have eight games left in August, seven of them against the Minnesota Twins and the Cleveland Indians.

Expect the fireworks to continue and for Roberts to tie his doubles record by Sept. 1.