From Opening Day through May 26th, Héctor Rodríguez had been having a decent-enough season for the AAA Louisville Bats. He entered play this morning having hit .270/.339/.431 with 7 homers for the club, showing an improved walk rate (up to 9.6% from 5.2% during his AAA time a year ago) and still striking out at his typically anemic rate (just 16.5%).
Those season-long numbers are going to look a whole lot better tomorrow for the 22 year old, though.
As MLB Pipeline’s Sam Dykstra pointed out this afternoon,
Héctor Rodríguez has blasted three homers for the Bats already on Wednesday – one of the inside-the-park variety – and at the time of writing this the game’s still not over just yet.
The third one the sweet-swingin’ lefty launched even came off Kody Funderburk, a southpaw in his own right.
It’s still unclear exactly where Héctor fits into the short-term plan for the Cincinnati Reds outfield, what with JJ Bleday completely on fire and Spencer Steer getting tons of run in the outfield corners with Sal Stewart, Eugenio Suarez, and Nathaniel Lowe all swinging hot bats on the infield corners. Still just 22 years old, though, it’s pretty clear that Héctor’s bat is going to carry him to the big leagues in short order one way or another.
