{"id":756790,"date":"2026-07-20T13:48:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/756790\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:48:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:48:30","slug":"pirates-esmerlyn-valdez-joins-record-books-with-latest-homer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/756790\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Esmerlyn Valdez joins record books with latest homer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Pittsburgh Pirates appear as though they have found something with 22-year-old outfielder Esmerlyn Valdez. He hit his 12th homerun of the year in Pittsburgh\u2019s 7-1 win over Cleveland on Sunday, making him just the fourth player in MLB history to achieve 12 homers and 31 RBIs through his first 31 games. Valdez joins Rhys Hoskins of Philadelphia in 2017, Cincinnati\u2019s Aristides Aquino in 2018-19 and the Dodgers\u2019 Will Smith in 2019 as the group of four.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Valdez is also hitting for average, as he\u2019s batting .305 on the season, and in his last 22 games, he\u2019s hiiting .370 with 27 RBIs, an impressive number. He hit two homers during the weekend series with Cleveland, and also knocked in 5 RBIs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Valdez has shown some signs of this kind of power \u2014 he hit 26 homers the Minors in 2025 and 22 homers in 2024 \u2014 and now he\u2019s been able to carry it over to the Major Leagues. Pirates manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/story\/_\/id\/49405224\/pirates-rookie-esmerlyn-valdez-12-homer-31-games\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Don Kelly had this to say to ESPN:<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">\u201cIt\u2019s the professionalism of the at-bats. He\u2019s not going up there necessarily trying to hit the home runs. He\u2019s going up there to hit, and he\u2019s got the power to leave anywhere in the yard. I mean, it\u2019s been really impressive what he\u2019s been able to do in such a short amount of time, but the adjustments he\u2019s made and the changes he\u2019s made so far have been really impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Bucs are now four games over .500 and are officially tied for the final Wild Card spot for the Playoffs. With any luck, Valdez will continue to contribute at a high-level. With fellow outfielder Oneil Cruz on the 60-day, and another big bat on the IL in Konnor Griffin, the Bucs are going to need all the help they can get from Valdez in order to make their final push for the postseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Pirates appear as though they have found something with 22-year-old outfielder Esmerlyn Valdez. He hit his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4,10,1141,776,64,4297],"class_list":["post-756790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-pirates","tag-pirates-news","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116952622939212692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756790","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=756790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}