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Pittsburgh Pirates’ Esmerlyn Valdez (55) is handed the welder’s mask by Billy Cook (25) to wear during the dugout celebration of his home run in the ninth inning of Sunday\u2019s baseball game against the Cleveland Guardians in Cleveland. Associated Press<\/p>\n
CLEVELAND \u2014 Esmerlyn Valdez\u2019s strong start to his major league career is showing no signs of slowing down.<\/p>\n
The Pittsburgh Pirates rookie outfielder\u2019s two-run homer<\/a> in the ninth inning of Sunday\u2019s 7-1 victory<\/a> over the Cleveland Guardians made him the fourth player in major league history with at least 12 homers and 31 RBIs in their first 31 games.<\/p>\n The others to accomplish that feat were Rhys Hoskins with Philadelphia in 2017, Cincinnati\u2019s Aristides Aquino in 2018-19 and the Dodgers\u2019 Will Smith in 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels great for the start that I\u2019ve had. I always believe in myself. I prepared \u2014 mentally and physically \u2014 for this season to achieve what I\u2019m achieving today, and the results are showing,\u201d Valdez said through a translator.<\/p>\n The 22-year-old Valdez, nicknamed \u201cThe Magician\u201d because his first name sounds like Merlin, was signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2021. He was added to the 40-man big league roster last November after batting .368 with eight home runs in the Arizona Fall League.<\/p>\n He went 5 for 17 during spring training but started the year at Triple-A Indianapolis. He made his major league debut May 22 and appeared in five games before returning to Triple-A. He was recalled June 11 and quickly became an integral part of the roster.<\/p>\n Manager Don Kelly said Valdez\u2019s power isn\u2019t the only impressive part of his game.<\/p>\n \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,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cI 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 Valdez has hit safely in 19 of his past 22 games, batting .370 (30 for 81) with 18 extra-base hits and 27 RBIs. He is the first Pirates hitter with an extra-base hit and RBI in seven straight games since Willie Stargell in 1971.<\/p>\n His 20 RBIs in July lead the majors and make him the sixth Pittsburgh rookie since 2000 with at least 20 RBIs in a calendar month.<\/p>\n Pirates ace Paul Skenes \u2014 who allowed one run and struck out eight in Sunday\u2019s victory \u2014 said he saw signs during spring training Valdez could have a big impact.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see a lot of guys that can hit the ball really far and take big swings and hit the ball really hard, but you don\u2019t see guys very often that take big swings and hit the ball really hard, really far and not chase and put together as good at-bats as he does,\u201d Skenes said.<\/p>\n Valdez, who went 3 for 11 with two home runs and five RBIs in the weekend series against Cleveland, is also part of a Pirates\u2019 offense that has hit its stride this season.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone on the team is doing a tremendous job. I think we\u2019ll keep working to achieve the goal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Pirates’ Esmerlyn Valdez (55) is handed the welder’s mask by Billy Cook (25) to wear during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,9331,9323,9318,9338,9344,9347,9322,9326,9324,1242,9325,9330,9321,9343,9337,9320,9341,9329,9319,9332,1358,9345,4,9335,169,6423,3838,9336,10,776,64,4297,7502,9327,9340,9339,9328,9346,9334,9333,9342],"class_list":["post-757021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-baseball","tag-bruin","tag-butler","tag-butler-eagle","tag-cabot","tag-callery","tag-cherry-valley","tag-community-news","tag-connoquenessing","tag-cranberry","tag-crime","tag-east-butler","tag-eau-claire","tag-education-news","tag-evans-city","tag-fairview","tag-government-news","tag-harmony","tag-harrisville","tag-high-school-sports-news","tag-karns-city","tag-local-news","tag-mars","tag-mlb","tag-mount-chesnut","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-pennsylvania","tag-petrolia","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-pittsburghpirates","tag-political-news","tag-portersville","tag-sarver","tag-saxonburg","tag-slippery-rock","tag-valencia","tag-west-liberty","tag-west-sunbury","tag-zelienople"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757021","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=757021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}