Babe Albies

Ozzie Albies pulled a Babe Ruth and called his walk-off home run.

Before Ozzie Albies strolled toward the plate for what proved to be one of the most euphoric plate appearances of his young career, he turned to Braves teammate Danny Santana and said, “It’s time to go long now.”

With the SunTrust Park clock approaching 1 a.m. ET, Albies stepped into the box and provided the Braves with an extremely satisfying, 5-4, 11-inning win over the Reds, courtesy of his first career walk-off home run.

“It felt amazing,” Albies said. “That is one of the most exciting times you can feel when you do that for the team.”

Albies collected three hits in the game, the other two doubles. He’s now slugging .507 with 44 of his 90 hits going for extra bases. He is a strange number two hitter/second baseman. The conventional view of that type of player is someone who gets on base a lot with speed but not a lot of power. Lately, more traditional power hitters have moved into the two slot someone who both gets on base and hits for power. Albies is turning out to be a power hitter who makes a higher number of outs, and generally those players should bat at the end of an offensive sequence rather than the beginning. If the Braves batted the pitcher eighth, a top three of Nick Markaksis, Freddie Freeman, Albies, with Inciarte ninth might be the team’s most productive order.

from baseballmusings.com https://ift.tt/2K7lvyV