While the Puerto Rican Winter League began nearly two months ago, and the regular season is coming to an end soon, teams are still bringing in players. One of those players is Cincinnati Reds prospect Alex McGarry, who joined Santurce just before Christmas, and has made his presence felt immediately.
In his first game he went 1-3 and drove in two runs. Three days later he went 1-3 with a walk and he scored two runs. On Wednesday night he would go 2-4 and score another run. On Thursday Santurce would play in a doubleheader against Mayaguez and he crushed his first home run, going 2-5 with two more runs batted in. Through five games he’s hitting .400/.412/.600 and has scored four runs and driven in four runs. The league has been laughably pitcher friendly this winter, where the OPS for the league is .598. Every team has played 39 games, and two of the teams (TEAMS!) have hit five and six home runs (and one is from McGarry). Caguas leads the league in home runs with 15 of them. Only two of the teams are slugging over .300 and neither team is over .308.
On a related note, Santurce also just added Reds reliever Fernando Cruz to the roster. He has pitched in one game so far, giving up a solo home run and picking up a strikeout in his one inning of work.
On Tuesday night in the Dominican, the LIDOM playoffs began. Hector Rodriguez, who was one of the best hitters in the league despite being the league’s youngest player with at least three games played, picked up right where he left off in the regular season. He went 2-5 in the first game. Last night he followed that up with another 2-5 game, but this time he had a double and he drove in three runs.
Rodriguez hasn’t been just placing hits in those two games, either. He’s been making some hard contact. Here are his exit velocities in the two games:
- 101.7 MPH – Single
- 99.4 MPH – Single
- 99.0 MPH – Flyout
- 97.2 MPH – Double
- 94.4 MPH – Lineout
- 92.1 MPH – Lineout
- 90.3 MPH – Single
- 82.9 MPH – Forceout
- 69.8 MPH – Pop Up