Posted by D.J. Short on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 5:22 pm

Go ahead and take a stab at it. No cheating! Pujols? Nope. Matt Kemp? Closer. Manny? Oh, forget it. We’ll be here all night. Reason why is because it’s actually the traditionally light-hitting Erick Aybar. That’s right. Entering play on Wednesday, the 5-foot-10 speedster has a 1.207 OPS this month, over .500 points above his career average of .690.

Aybar began July with a .271 batting average, right in line with his career average, but a 26-for-53 (.491) run has inflated his batting average to it’s current .315. Entering Wednesday’s action, only Martin Prado and Orlando Cabrera have more hits this month. Aybar has been so good that he is currently leading the majors in on-base percentage this month (.509) despite having just two walks to his credit. That leads us to the obvious question: has the 25-year-old Aybar arrived?

Well, maybe. His strong glove and elite speed made him a top prospect, swiping 186 bases in 551 minor league games, but he has just 20 steals in 284 games in the majors — a rather significant disappointment. He also has never seen a pitch he doesn’t like, drawing only 38 walks in 914 career plate appearances (4.3% career walk rate). You know who has the same walk rate? Delmon Young. Nuff said.

So while he’s shown only modest improvement with his walk rate this season (5.1%) the one thing he does do is put the ball in play. Aybar makes contact 89.8% of the time and 96.1% of the time with pitches in the zone. With his tremendous speed, a .346 BABIP shouldn’t be a huge surprise. But the most encouraging part of his early success? A 21.4% line drive rate, up 4% from 2008.

If Mike Scioscia would just take the brakes off, Aybar is a sure-fire 30 stolen base guy year in and year out. Assuming that won’t happen, there’s no reason he can’t sustain a .300 batting average and .360 on-base percentage while scoring anywhere from 80-100 runs. In other words, he projects as an above-average major-league shortstop.