Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona often says that it\u2019s always a good sign to see someone hitting a line drive the other way with authority.<\/p>\n
What does it tell you when a hitter has six opposite field homers in the first 18 games of the season?<\/p>\n
Reds rookie first baseman Sal Stewart delivered two of those opposite field homers and led the team to an 8-3 win on Wednesday over the San Francisco Giants at Great American Ball Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no words,\u201d center fielder TJ Friedl said about Stewart. \u201cIt\u2019s incredible. His maturity pitch to pitch is the most incredible part. Being able to work an at-bat and know where he\u2019s being pitched and where each pitch needs to go. It\u2019s insane. He just grinds out good at-bats. He\u2019s just a really mature hitter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, there wasn\u2019t a single Reds\u2019 hitter who had six or more opposite field homers all season. This is just another example of how Stewart is advanced beyond his years.<\/p>\n
Stewart statistically has been a top-five hitter in MLB through the first few weeks of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy I had a good day today, but the game is over now,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cI\u2019ll enjoy it tonight, but tomorrow we\u2019ve got to come out here and look for the sweep.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the win on Wednesday, Stewart\u2019s six RBIs are second-most by a Reds rookie in a single game since rookie rules were established in 1958. According to MLB statistician Sarah Langs, Stewart\u2019s 12 homers through 36 career games are the second-most in Reds\u2019 history, behind Aristides Aquino in 2019.<\/p>\n
The best game of Stewart\u2019s young career came one day after an interview where he said the Reds\u2019 offense would get rolling. Stewart was far from the only contributor to a big offensive game for the Reds, which included a homers by designated hitter Eugenio Su\u00e1rez and shortstop Elly De La Cruz.<\/p>\n
The Reds entered the day on Wednesday with an offense that needed a spark. The Reds ranked 27th in the majors in runs scored, and they had been held to two runs or fewer eight times this season. The offense showed its ceiling on Wednesday against the Giants and former Reds\u2019 starting pitcher Tyler Mahle.<\/p>\n
Stewart was the star.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a stud,\u201d second baseman Matt McLain said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great hitter. He\u2019s a great teammate. He\u2019s just mashing the ball. If you see the pitches he\u2019s hitting, he\u2019s really impressive. He works at it. He\u2019s a great player, a great hitter and a great teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahle was often a poor hit in the Reds\u2019 home ballpark during his tenure with the team. He\u2019s a fly ball pitcher, and Wednesday was another game where he struggled producing in Great American Ball Park.<\/p>\n
Reds starting pitcher Rhett Lowder bounced back from the worst start of his young big league career. Six days after allowing four runs in Miami, he pitched 6 \u2154 innings against the Giants and allowed three runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ball was coming out better,\u201d Lowder said. \u201cI was executing a lot better. Getting ahead. The times I wasn\u2019t getting ahead, I threw some soft stuff and got weak contact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona often says that it\u2019s always a good sign to see someone hitting a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,50,162,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-677036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati-reds","10":"tag-giants","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-giants","14":"tag-sanfrancisco","15":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-giants","18":"tag-sfgiants","19":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116415375843739730","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}