With one swing, Yordan Alvarez ended the Tampa Bay Rays’ nine-game win streak and started the party in Houston. The super-slugging Astros designated hitter teed off on a 93-mph four-seam fastball that was served to him like an Independence Day hot dog. It was right down the plate, and the 6-foot-4, 237-pound lefty ate it up.
In fact, he annihilated it, tattooing the pitch from Tampa Bay right-hander Casey Legumina and sending it 424 feet to dead center.
For the second time in his career, the Cuban-born Alvarez had launched a walk-off home run on July 4, this one a two-run shot that gifted the Astros a 10-8 victory and punctuated his power-charged, two-homer, six-RBI outing.
Four years ago, he accomplished the feat with a 444-foot solo shot to right-center field, vaulting Houston over the Kansas City Royals in a 2022 matchup.
The Rays (52-34) had been riding the longest win streak of any AL team this season. Houston (44-47), now just 2.5 games out of first place in the AL West, halted that momentum, in large part thanks to Alvarez.
The 29-year-old now has 29 home runs this season. He leads the American League in that category and is building a legitimate case for AL MVP. He came into Saturday’s game with a .319 batting average.
He also entered first among all qualifying MLB players in on-base percentage (.431), slugging percentage (.625), OPS (1.055) and a variety of other metrics, such as offensive WAR (4.3).
Earlier in the day, he was named the AL’s starting DH in this year’s All-Star Game.
Alvarez’s first long ball arrived in the first inning. He carried that one 403 feet to left center, scoring a pair of runs and giving the Astros an early 2-1 lead. They didn’t score again until fourth, however. By then, they were chipping away at what became a 7-2 deficit.
Alvarez assisted Houston in climbing out of that hole, too. He hit an RBI single in the fifth and a sac fly that scored a run in the seventh. The Astros knotted the game up 8-8 later that frame, with a Zach Dezenzo single plating the game-tying run.
Alvarez finished the job in the ninth with no outs after Jose Altuve drew a leadoff walk. In 2022, the same season Alvarez hit his first July 4 walk-off homer, he blasted a big fly that provided the Astros with the go-ahead runs in their World Series-clinching victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.
It’ll be tough for Alvarez to knock a more impactful four-bagger. That’s not to say, of course that Saturday’s holiday no-doubter will be forgotten anytime soon.
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