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Offensive Players of the Week

For the week ending July 27
July 28, 2014

Here's a look at the top offensive performers in each league for the week ending July 27:

International League
Andy Wilkins, Charlotte
(.467/.515/1.067, 8 G, 14-for-30, 3 2B, 5 HR, 16 RBI, 10 R, 3 BB, 3 K, 1 CS)
Wilkins is doing things to baseballs that one does not normally see in Triple-A ballparks east of the Mississippi River. He clubbed a pair of homers on both Tuesday and Wednesday at Indianapolis -- driving in 12 runs combined in the two games -- en route to his second consecutive IL Player of the Week award. In 23 July games, the 25-year-old first baseman is batting .441/.459/.935 with 12 homers and 31 RBIs -- 10 long balls and 24 RBIs have come in his last 12 contests.
Knights' Wilkins smacks grand slam

Pacific Coast League
Matt McBride, Colorado Springs
(.464/.484/.571, 8 G, 13-for-28, 3 2B, 0 HR, 6 RBI, 5 R, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 CS)
After slugging 15 homers in 48 games for the Sky Sox last season, McBride has just one in his first 28 games this year. Despite the diminished power, however, the 29-year-old DH can still produce, even after missing nearly three months of action with a stress fracture in his right foot. McBride is batting .340 since his return to Colorado Springs on July 11 and contributed four multi-hit games last week and drove in a run in six of his eight contests.
McBride's double puts Colorado Springs on scoreboard

Eastern League
Jake Fox, Reading
(.440/.517/1.040, 7 G, 11-for-25, 3 2B, 4 HR, 14 RBI, 5 R, 0 BB, 5 K)
Fox first played for Reading back in 2012, batting .203 with five homers in 17 games. His return at age 32 has seen him add average to the power -- the slugger has posted a .351/.404/.695 line in 41 games. Four of his 14 long balls for the Fightins came last week, highlighted by a two-homer, six-RBI performance at Erie on Tuesday. Fox adds the Eastern League to the list of circuits in which he's been named Player of the Week, joining the PCL (twice in 2009), Southern (twice in 2007-2008) and Florida State League (once in 2006).
Jake Fox goes deep for the Fightin Phils

Southern League
O'Koyea Dickson, Chattanooga
(.464/.500/786, 7 G, 13-for-28, 3 2B, 2 HR, 9 RBI, 9 R, 2 BB, 3 K)
Most players experience a drop in power after leaving the California League, but Dickson has already matched his home run output from last year with a month left in the 2014 campaign. Two of his 15 blasts came last week, along with nine of his 59 RBIs this season. The 24-year-old Dickson had multiple hits in five of seven games last week and scored a run in six of them. The big week lifted his batting average to .333 in July, easily his best month of the year.

Texas League
Joey Gallo, Frisco
(.438/.929/1.3666, 8 G, 10-for-28, 1 2B, 5 HR, 13 RBI, 7 R, 4 BB, 11 K)
Gallo does enough damage under normal circumstances, but when he gets on a streak, look out. The 20-year-old third baseman has five blasts in his last seven games, surging ahead of Iowa's Kris Bryant to take a three-homer edge atop the Minor League leaderboard. Gallo's OBP and slugging percentage are down 100 points each since his arrival in Double-A but are still robust. Of somewhat greater concern is the sheer number of strikeouts: 73 in just 41 games with Frisco for a 42.2 percent strikeout rate. But he's four years younger than the average Texas League hitter and has shown an ability to make adjustments as he's risen through the Minors, and his power is something very special.
Frisco's Gallo launches 36th home run of 2014

California League
Jordy Lara, High Desert
(.500/.542/1.227, 5 G, 11-for-22, 4 2B, 4 HR, 9 RBI, 7 R, 2 BB, 2 K)
Lara captured the Cal League award for the second straight week and third time this season after extending his hitting streak to 17 games, during which he hit an astonishing .479 with eight home runs. The 23-year-old Dominican native ranks second in the league with a .353 batting average and 1.022 OPS. He homered in five consecutive games last week, including a 4-for-5 performance Thursday in which he homered, doubled twice and drove in four runs. He won't get a chance to match the league's longest hitting streak of 18 games, however -- he was promoted to Double-A Jackson on Sunday.

Carolina League
Oscar Tejeda, Potomac
(.438/.471/.750, 7 G, 14-for-32, 4 2B, 2 HR, 7 RBI, 6 R, 2 BB, 3 K, 2 SB)
Tejeda came into the week having collected at least three hits in six games this season. He added four more of those last week, capped by a two-homer performance against Carolina on Sunday. The 24-year-old slugger already has 16 long balls this year, just the second time in eight Minor League seasons that he's delivered double-digit home runs. He hit 11 for Salem back in 2010, his last season in the Carolina League.

Florida State League
Justin O'Conner, Charlotte
(.385/.385/.923, 6 G, 10-for-26, 2 2B, 4 HR, 7 RBI, 0 BB, 7 K)
O'Conner had his 14-game hitting streak snapped at Dunedin on Sunday, but not before lifting his season average 25 points and doubling his homer output. Four of those long balls came during a five-game stretch at Clearwater and Dunedin last week. A first-round pick in 2010, the 22-year-old backstop has been better known for his prowess behind the plate than at it: he's thrown out 50 percent of would-be base stealers this season. He's also having his best year as a hitter, posting a .276/.313/.487 line with 30 doubles, second-most in the FSL.

Midwest League
Daniel Palka, South Bend
(.450/.577/.950, 6 G, 9-for-20, 2 2B, 1 3B, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 3 R, 6 BB, 3 K, 1 SB, 1 CS)
A third-round pick out of Georgia Tech last year, Palka leads the Midwest League in home runs (20) and RBIs (74) in his first full season. He padded both margins last week, going deep on both Saturday and Sunday the first two games of a three-game sweep of host Clinton. Palka's power has really picked up in the second half of the season -- after hitting 10 homers in 67 first-half games, he has 10 more (and is slugging .579) in 34 games since the All-Star break.

South Atlantic League
J.T. Riddle, Greensboro
(.500/.517/.846, 6 G, 13-for-26, 3 2B, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 10 R, 2 BB, 2 K)
The second half of the season has been especially kind to Riddle, a 13th-round pick out of the University of Kentucky in 2013. The Grasshoppers third baseman hit just .237/.299/.314 in 41 first-half games before breaking out with a .357/.385/.580 line in 34 games since. The hits came in bunches last week for the 22-year-old Riddle: he collected multiple hits in six straight games from July 19-25 and has scored at least once in each of his last eight contests.

New York-Penn League
Mauricio Dubon, Lowell
(.444/.429/.667, 7 G, 12-for-27, 2 HR, 9 RBI, 6 R, 0 BB, 0 K, 1 SB, 1 CS)
Dubon turned 20 on July 29 and its been nothing but hits for the Red Sox shortstop prospect ever since. On Monday Dubon hit his second pro homer, a three-run shot, and drove in four runs in total before adding a third blast two days later. He collected multiple hits in five of his seven games during the week and lifted his season average 30 points to .286.

Northwest League
Skyler Ewing, Salem-Keizer
(.429/.484/.571, 7 G, 12-for-28, 4 2B, 1 RBI, 5 R, 2 BB, 6 K)
A sixth-round pick out of Rice in last month's Draft, Ewing did OK in his first taste of pro ball, hitting .243 with one homer and eight RBIs in 10 games for the AZL Giants. He's been much better than "OK" since joining the Volcanoes, batting .346/.450/.519 with 17 RBIs, 14 walks and just nine strikeouts in his first 22 Northwest League games. Ewing capped the surge with a huge weekend, going 7-for-9 in a pair of games Saturday and Sunday. At 6-foot-1, 225 pounds, more home run power should be forthcoming from the first baseman; his on-base and contact rates are already impressive.

Appalachian League
Nic Wilson, Princeton
(.444/.464/.852, 6 G, 12-for-27, 2 2B, 3 HR, 6 RBI, 5 R, 1 BB, 4 K)
Nic Wilson is a large man -- he's 6-foot-6 and 240 pounds -- and when he squares up a baseball it will go a fair distance. That happened three times last week, including twice in a 4-for-7 performance at Pulaski on Friday, giving him seven on the season, second-most in the Appy League. A 24th-round pick out of Georgia State in June, he was fourth in the NCAA with 18 homers as a senior. Though he's struck out 31.3 percent of the time in the small sample size of his 33-game pro career, he has power worth watching.

Pioneer League
Trevor Mitsui, Missoula
(.448/.500/.793, 7 G, 13-for-29, 4 2B, 2 HR, 11 RBI, 6 R, 0 BB, 8 K)
It appears that hitting for the cycle in his 27th career game was just a prelude for Mitsui, a 30th-round pick last month. In 10 games since the cycle, the 21-year-old first baseman is batting .439/.477/.854 with four homers and 14 RBIs while putting together the second double-digit hitting streak of his season. Mitsui now ranks third in the Pioneer League in both homers (nine) and RBIs (34).

John Parker is an editor for MiLB.com.