Adrian Beltre has been feeling some pressure. With Hamilton struggling, he entered tonight’s game mired in a one-homer-in-thirty-games stretch. My, how quickly fortunes turn. It’s the top of the ninth inning (press time) at the Ballpark in Arlington, and Beltre is 3/5 with 3 HR and 5 RBI (single handedly preventing the fantasy version of myself from jumping off a fantasy building in fantasy land). The Rangers are finishing up doing what they do (knocking the crap out of the ball) against the Orioles, who, in turn, are finishing up doing what they do (being generally mediocre, having terrible starting pitching, and losing big when they lose). Beltre is hitting behind Josh Hamilton, and if you don’t live under a rock, you’ll remember that it was these Orioles upon whom Hamilton layeth-ed the smack down earlier this season. Three bombs isn’t quite as cool as four, but doing it in your first three at-bats is pretty cool, and two in one inning is super cool.
Beltre, as he has become accustomed to, is putting together a very, very nice year. Tonight’s heroics put him over 20 homers and 70 RBI. Now you might glance at those numbers and say to yourself, “those are not ‘very, very nice’ numbers” but to you I say, “it’s difficult to drive people in who just gave you a high five on their way back to the dugout after Hamilton hit a bomb.”
Hamilton has 35 of those this year, and 102 RBI. He’s also scored 80 runs, 10 more than Beltre, which suggests Beltre has driven him in quite a few times. Like tonight. Hamilton was on base for two of Beltre’s three bombs. Unfortunately, the Elias Sports Bureau doesn’t return my calls in a timely manner, so I can’t tell you how many times Hamilton has driven in runners before a Beltre hit. But even if I could, that would be a shoddy statistic worthy of Skip Bayless (who, incidentally, did two very Skip Bayless things today), so I won’t even get into the hypotheticals.
Suffice it to say, without Josh Hamilton in front of him, a few more of Betre’s 22 homers could well have gone for more than one run, and had roles been reversed, he might have more RBI. No matter, he just became the ninth third-baseman in MLB history with 10 seasons of 20+ home runs. Well done, Adrian. Well done indeed.
-Ari Glantz
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