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Seattle Mariners prodigy Julio Rodríguez started the season as one of baseball’s brightest prospects and lives up to the hype. On Monday night, Rodriguez started a 429-foot home run into the third deck of the Western Metal Supply Building in left field at Petco Park (GameTracker). It’s quite a poke to hit it up there.
Here is the video of Rodríguez’s Titanic explosion:
Monday’s home run was Rodríguez’s 15th of the season and he made obscure history. Rodríguez hit 15 career homers and 20 career stolen bases in 81 games, the fastest of any player in history. Here are the five fastest to reach these two milestones:
It’s nice company. Bonds is an all-time great, Davis is one of the most electrifying players of the past 40 years and Burks has had a very productive 18-year career. Daniels was a damn good player too. He retired with over 100 homers and a career .285/.382/.479 batting line in chunks of seven seasons. There’s also:
21-year-old Rodríguez started the season slowly, hitting just .205/.284/.260 in April. He’s been on the rise since the end of the first month of the season and has built a .300/.355/.555 batting line with 14 home runs in 60 games since May 1. Rodríguez leads the American League with 20 stolen bases. He has a legitimate shot at a 30/30 season as a rookie.
Without Houston Astros rookie shortstop Jeremy Peña, Rodríguez would be the clear favorite for AL Rookie of the Year honors. Peña was also excellent and we could be headed for a Rookie of the Year race, much like 2015 when Carlos Correa ousted Francisco Lindor in one of the closest voting results ever.