Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Aristides Aquino homered. The Cincinnati Reds 25-year-old rookie continued his assault on the record books on Monday afternoon in Cincinnati against the Phillies. There wasn’t much working for the Reds offense, but Aristides Aquino was one of the few bright spots. In the bottom of the second inning The Punished absolutely crushed a Drew Smyly offering deep into the upper deck bleachers in left field for his 15th home run of the season.
While many of the records that Aristides Aquino has been setting this season have been quickest to reach X home runs in Y games, that wasn’t the one he reached today. What he did do was set the record for fewest plate appearances in a career to reach 15 home runs. His homer came in his 122nd career trip to the plate, breaking the record set back in 2017 by Rhys Hoskins. Hoskins happened to be on the other side of the field today for the Phillies and he homered twice as Philadelphia topped the Reds. Hoskins holds the record for fewest career games to reach both 15 and 16 home runs, when he did so in 32 games.
We’ve never really seen a run like this to start a career. It’s been rather incredible. After hitting 28 home runs in Triple-A this season (and missing nearly a month due to a shoulder injury), Aristides Aquino now has 15 more in the Majors. That’s 43 on the season. He needs 10 more to break the franchise record for most home runs in a year by a player under contract, currently held by George Foster and the 52 that he hit in his MVP season of 1977.
X-rays for Eugenio Suarez come back clean
The Cincinnati Reds reported that the x-rays on Eugenio Suarez’ left hand were negative. That’s good news because after being hit by a pitch over the weekend his hand swelled up after he was removed from the game. No word on if he’ll be able to play tomorrow, but C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic did have this from earlier today:
David Bell said Eugenio Suárez is "day-to-day." He said he didn't know about his status for Tuesday's game. That's a vast improvement from Sunday night when he told Suárez that he should be proud of his 2019 season
— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) September 2, 2019
I like Suarez’s ability to recover quickly from injuries. Tough dude! Ok any chance we sell high on Aquino and trade him for some desperately needed pitching?
What r u talking about? We have great starting pitching, which is only going to get better. Were certainly not going to trade him for a middle reliever. Also there has been no one in the stands all year, so let’s trade the one player that may bring the fans back.
We have 2 really good starters but I wouldn’t use the word great to describe the entire starting staff. There is still work to do there and also the bullpen.
Aquino has been the right handed bat we’d hoped Puig would be, and you want to dump him already. Obviously no one expects him to continue at this kinda pace, but we now have 2 power hitting righties in the middle of the lineup. If Votto new swing continues to improve his game, and Winker reverts back to an OBP guy, we could have a lineup that really scores some runs.
The starters have been in top 5 all year. Thx
Doesn’t matter, he won’t b back next yr