CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 With the Guardians\u2019 offense floundering in the midst of a 28-inning scoreless streak, Rays infielder Junior Caminero gave Cleveland a glimpse of what could have been on Monday with a two-homer game at Progressive Field.<\/p>\n
The Guardians, who have not had a primary right-handed hitter post 30 home runs in a season since Franmil Reyes\u2019 did so in 2021, watched Caminero, a righty they signed as a 16-year-old out of the Dominican Republic in 2019, club homers No. 38 and 39 in a 9-0 Tampa win. <\/p>\n
Manny Ramirez was the last right-handed Cleveland slugger at least with 39 home runs in a season when he led the team with 44 in in 1999. Edwin Encarnacion led the club with 38 in 2017.<\/p>\n
Cleveland traded Caminero to Tampa for right-hander Tobias Myers in November of 2021. It is generally regarded as one of the club\u2019s worst trades under the Chris Antonetti\/Mike Chernoff front office regime. <\/p>\n
Myers never reached the majors with the Guardians and was released from Triple-A Columbus in 2022 before eventually landing in Milwaukee. He found a degree of success with the Brewers last season after making his debut, going 9-6 with a 3.00 ERA across 27 appearances (25 starts).<\/p>\n
Caminero, meanwhile, instantly became one of Tampa\u2019s top prospects and one of the top slugging prospects in all of baseball. He was ranked as the club\u2019s No. 5 prospect by MLB Pipeline at the end of 2023 (behind Kyle Manzardo), and was the No. 1 prospect at the end of last season after appearing in 43 games at the big league level.<\/p>\n
BETTING: Guardians -1.5 runline is +170 on DraftKings<\/a> for Tuesday\u2019s contest versus Tampa Bay. Our comprehensive DraftKings Sportsbook review<\/a> will show you how to use their site.<\/p>\n Caminero\u2019s 39 home runs this season are tied with Brandon Lowe (2021) for the second-most home runs in a single campaign in Rays history, trailing only Carlos Pe\u00f1a\u2019s 46 in 2007. His 12 home runs in August lead MLB and his four multi-home run games are tied for the most by a Rays player in a single season with Pe\u00f1a (2007 & 2009), Brandon Lowe (2021) and Jorge Cant\u00fa (2005).<\/p>\n In five career games against the Guardians, Caminero is batting .364 with four doubles, two home runs, four RBI and a 1.182 OPS. <\/p>\n Trivia<\/p>\n Austin Hedges made his third pitching appearance of the season and the eighth of his career in Monday\u2019s blowout loss. It was Hedges fourth career pitching appearance with Cleveland, tying him with Frank Bowser and Paul O\u2019Day for the fourth-most by a position player in franchise history. Who has the most position player pitching appearances for the club? (answer below)<\/p>\n Next<\/p>\n Today: LHP Parker Messick (0-0, 1.35) vs. RHP Shane Baz (8-10, 5.22) at 6:40 p.m. CLEGuardians.TV, WKYC TV3, WTAM 1100 AM, WMMS 100.7 FM, WARF 1350 AM (Spanish) and the Guardians Radio Network will carry the game. <\/p>\n Wednesday: RHP Slade Cecconi (5-6, 4.41) vs. RHP Drew Rasmussen (10-5, 2.62) at 1:10 p.m. CLEGuardians.TV, MLB Network (out of market only), WTAM 1100 AM, WARF 1350 AM (Spanish) and the Guardians Radio Network will carry the game. <\/p>\n Thursday: The Guardians are off.<\/p>\n Friday: The Mariners open a three-game weekend series at Progressive Field.<\/p>\n Trivia answer<\/p>\n Chubby Dean\u2019s 52 pitching appearances for Cleveland from 1941 to 1943 are the most by a position player. Dean, a first baseman, compiled 236 plate appearances and 377 2\/3 innings for Cleveland after he was acquired from Philadelphia during the 1941 campaign.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 With the Guardians\u2019 offense floundering in the midst of a 28-inning scoreless streak, Rays infielder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-112119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}