Mark Reynolds is on fire!

You may know Mark Reynolds as the player who has 1092 career strikeouts in 828 careers games. You may know Mark Reynolds from his .237 career batting average and 32.7% strikeout rate absolutely wrecking your fantasy baseball team. Well, opposing pitchers know Mark Reynolds for a different reason over the last week: Home Run Machine!

Reynolds has 8 home runs in his last 26 at-bats after he hit 2 against the Yankees last night. He leads the majors in OPS over the last 30 days, and he’s hit 12 of his 20 home runs over that time as well. He’s batting an outrageous .409 this month*, and has been a key to the Orioles battle for the AL East.

*6 days! Small sample size!

Since August 1, when the Orioles were 6.5 games behind the Yankees, they’ve had a record of 22-10 while forcing their way into a tie for first in the division. That coincides with Reynolds hot month of August, which has carried over to September. That’s not to say Reynolds is the only reason the Orioles are on fire. They are a very flukish 24-7 in one-run games, and they are STILL being outscored overall by opponents, even though they are 17 games above .500. It doesn’t hurt to have this unexpected production from a player who is more known for striking out more than 200 times a year than a player who is carrying his team to the playoffs.

Better plate discipline could be playing into the recent spike; Reynolds walked twice as much in August as he did in July, and he’s already collected four free passes this month. He still is a very streaky hitter. Just look at his averages from each month this season: .143 (March/April), .306 (May), .218 (June), .207 (July), .275 (August), .409 (September). His season split for power numbers is incredibly streaky too: .063, .278, .205, .134, .300, .818 (September). Here’s our blog on the ISO power number, which basically takes extra bases divided by at-bats. Somewhere around .200 is average.

Who know what to expect from Mark Reynolds the last few weeks of the season, but the Orioles hope he keeps this torrid pace up. They’re looking for their first postseason appearance since 1997.