Mike Stanton has been hitting the ball very well and far lately.  Let’s dig a little deeper.

The 21-year-old outfielder is batting just .235 on the year with six homers, 23 RBIs, a .445 slugging and an 11/55 BB/K ratio. Those are not the kind of numbers that inspire conga lines.

But these might:

.313-21-52 line in just 192 at-bats with Double-A Jacksonville.

And so might these:

Over his last 11 games, Stanton’s batting .297 (11-for-37) with four homers, four doubles, 10 RBIs and a .730 slugging percentage. If that wasn’t enough, and perhaps it isn’t, he’s also shown a more-mature-but-sure,-it’s-not-incredible 5/11 BB/K ratio in that span, and he’s only fanned once in his last five games. Show me progress!

With a free-swinging approach, it only makes sense that it would take some time for Stanton to morph into a Major League hitter. And to take an Ian Kay approach to this little writeup, Stanton is owned in only 25 percent of Yahoo! leagues. Personally, I’d rather take a flier on his power potential than keep the likes of Jose Bautista, Brennan Boesch and maybe even Colby Rasmus.