The Halos Heaven community is, of course, excited about the turnaround we've seen in the Angels during the last month. Naturally, that has caused a lot of debate about why. One very basic reason is that the Angels are hitting better. Here are some numbers from FanGraphs that help quantify the turnaround.

.................Walkrate ....K% .........ISO .....BABIP ... AVG ...SLG ....OBP ... wRC ...+ WAR

April .............6.9% ....19.5% .... .122 ... .280 ........ .238 ... .360 .. .291 .......80 ..........1.3

May ..............6.9% ....16.7% ..... .142 .. .293 ......... .263 ... .405 .. .317 .......99 ..........4.7

Last 7 days .5.6% .....15% ...... .167 ... .278 ........ .265 ... .433 . .308 .......103 .........1.4

Glossary (go to FanGraphs for the long, complete explanations)
ISO measures raw power (hitting for extra bases) ~ .200 = good; .145 = average; .100 = poor
BABIP is "batting average balls in play" ~ the mlb average is around .300
wRC+ is "weighted runs created" measures how a players wRC+ compares with league average, which is always 100
WAR is "wins above replacement" measures a player's total contribution in one stat. (Vernon Wells 2011 WAR = 0.3 /// Mike Trout 2012 WAR so far = 1.7)

So looking at these stats it's clear that the Angels hitting is vastly improved in May from April, and that a big part of the improvement has come from the long-ball. Their BABIP also went up, and that's always nice. Having some faster players (like Trout) on the team now as well as some players hitting 'em where you can't catch them (Albert Pujols & Mark Trumbo) helps a lot too.

Pretty alarming to have more (hitting) WAR in the last week as in all of April. Let's just forget about that month, shall we?