Technically Nelson Cruz’s latest home run was his least impressive. It wasn’t game tying or winning. His teammates would say the three-run bomb in the 11th inning of another 7-3 win wasn’t even his best moment of the night. Still, it helped carry the Rangers into Game 5 of the ALCS and a date with Justin Verlander up three games to one.
Cruz’s 10th career playoff home run in just his 24th game made the right fielder the first player in postseason history with two extra-inning round-trippers in the same series. In those games, he is batting .281 and slugging .708. To put in perspective how Herculean his bat has been in baseball’s “second” season, at the rate Cruz is going, he’d have 68 home runs over the course of a 162 game season. He has hit three more goners than singles. And this is against the league’s best pitchers.
During the 2011 LCS, Cruz hit a game-winning home run in Game 1 and added a game-tying shot and walk-off grand slam in Game 2. But what made Cruz’s performance so special Wednesday night was his strong, accurate arm. With the go-ahead run at third in the bottom of the eighth, Delmon Young launched a fly ball deep to right. Cruz camped under it and whipped a perfect strike up the third-base line to Mike Napoli in plenty of time for the catcher to set up and tag out Miguel Cabrera. Beautiful.
Really, there’s no telling what Cruz will do next. But it’ll likely be something dramatic.