Edwin Encarnacion Named Blue Jays Player of the Month

In a very unsurprising announcement this morning, Edwin Encarnacion was awarded the Honda Player of the Month award as voted on by the Toronto chapter of the BBWAA. The choice was obvious after the Dominican launched 16 home runs in 30 games during May tying Mickey Mantle for the most dingers in May by an American League player. If you'll recall, outfielder Melky Cabrera and right-handed pitcher Mark Buehrle shared the Player of the Month honours for April.

Other contenders for the award this month included Mark Buehrle who had a 2.48 ERA in six starts, all of which the Blue Jays won. Jose Bautista also had a torrid May hitting .324 with a .417 OBP and six home runs, which would be good enough to win the Player of the Month most of the time. Neither of them could compete with the aforementioned 16 home runs hit by Encarnacion though, which went along with a .281 average and a .369 OBP. In spite of his monster stat line, the first baseman actually had a BABIP of .195, meaning his average could have been a whole higher had some of those hard hits balls dropped in.

Confirmation of the unanimous selection was provided by the Blue Jays:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/BlueJays">@BlueJays</a> 1B <a href="https://twitter.com/Encadwin">@Encadwin</a> named HONDA Player of the Month for May in a unanimous vote as selected by the Toronto Chapter of the BBWAA.</p>&mdash; Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) <a href="https://twitter.com/BlueJays/statuses/473480724167671808">June 2, 2014</a></blockquote>

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We'll see how long Encarnacion can keep up this ridiculous pace as the calandar has flipped into June and the Blue Jays stare down some tough pitching in the coming weeks including the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals. It's also likely that he will be bringing home American League Player of the Month honours for the month of May.

Here's a roundup of the month that Encarnacion just had:

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