Who Will Be MLB's Second-Half All-Stars?

Catcher

American League: Alex Avila

National League: Tyler Flowers

Among players with at least 200 plate appearances, guess who has the highest hard-hit rate in the league? Nope, it's not Aaron Judge or Mike Trout -- it's Alex Avila, and it's not even all that close. That's right, Avila has an absurd 55.7% hard-hit rate, the only guy who cracks the 50% mark. Of course, this is skewed because he has all of 15 plate appearances against lefties this year, but he still deserves props at a position that routinely splits time -- of 166 qualified hitters, which doesn't include Avila, only seven are catchers. His xwOBA -- Statcast's metric that is a closer representation of a player's skill than regular wOBA -- is a whopping .452, which doesn't trail far behind Judge's .457. Obviously, this isn't to say he's at the same level as Judge, but it shows how much the guy has mashed righties in 2017. He still strikes out a lot, so don't expect the .299 average to stick around, but with 11 homers on the year, he has a good chance to surpass his career-high 19 from 2011.

Tyler Flowers may only have six dingers and a .135 isolated power (ISO) to this point, but a 36.5% hard-hit rate suggests we should see those numbers rise in the second half. In fact, dating back to the start of 2016, across 545 plate appearances, Flowers has a 40.7% hard-hit rate and 42.8% ground-ball rate. Yet, he only has 14 home runs, so he looks long overdue for an influx of long balls. As a bonus, he's also striking out less often this season (20.5% rate).