CLEVELAND, Ohio – Indian butcher Franmil Reyes did not know what pitch his cousin, Ivan Nova, threw him in the second inning on Friday, but he had a pretty good idea based on past experience what pitch the Detroit judge was trying to avoid. .
“I took him last year with a cutter to the right center for a homer,” Reyes said. “I knew he would not throw that again.”
That Reyes was looking for a curveball and got his pitch, drove the ball out of the park for a two-run home run in the second inning and jumped the Cleveland Indians to a 10-5 win against the Tigers in the first meeting of the season between the two clubs. It was just what Cleveland’s anemic crime needed on a day when the Indians were emotionally speaking as a team.
Reyes finished with two hits, including an RBI single in the fourth inning, but it was his 462-foot explosion into the woods outside the center field at Comerica Park that all had baseball squealing at his display of raw power. The homer was the fifth-longest in the majors this season and ranks as the second-longest by an Indian hitter since Statcast began tracking distances in 2015.
Only Mike Napoli’s 463-foot drive against the Yankees on September 9, 2016 went ahead.
With hits in seven straight games, Reyes has his average bats of the season up to .292 and she has six extra-base hits in that stretch. Despite the striking results, Reyes said his workout routine is not aimed at hitting the ball out of the park.
“It just stays with my plan, which brings the ball to the other side,” Reyes said. ‘Even the interiors I try to touch the other side in practice. It helps me to stay close and inside the baseball as I get my pitch in the game. ‘
Early in the season, Reyes seemed to get lost on the record. He fluttered while breaking spots in the dirt or took fastballs across the plate for strikes. Through 12 games, he batted at .163 with a .182 on-base percentage and .438 OPS.
But since his game-winning home game in Cincinnati on Aug. 4, Reyes has appeared locked up, batting .433 with eight RBIs and a .700 sloping percentage over his last 32-plate appearances.
“At the start of the season, I basically tried to pull every ball and I didn’t understand at that point that my strength was right center,” Reyes said. “When I finally got my timing back, it was unbelievable.”
Tyler Naquin, who delivered a two-run in the seventh inning Friday, said he and Reyes talked during baggage practice about how they want to concentrate on hitting up to the middle of the field.
“He told me, ‘Stay in that hole in the left center,’ and sure enough he hit a homer to dead center, hit a line drive to center and I hit a line drive in the opposite gap,” said Naquin. “It’s always fun when our plan comes together.”
Indian manager Terry Francona said Reyes shows how sometimes it pays to hitchhikers work their own way out of sunshine.
“That’s the reason you are patient,” Francona said. “Because if you are not, you are potentially missing out on some really good baseball, or some production.”
Part of Reyes’ problem was not being able to get live pitching in nearly four months away from baseball during the shutdown of the coronavirus pandemic. Reyes spent time in his native Dominican Republic, where there were not many opportunities to work out with big league bets. Once he returned for summer training camp, the process of recovering his timing was slow.
“At home it was really difficult because I always like to follow pitchers when they throw such bullpens,” he said. “But those few games we play in summer camp gave me some time.”
Now Reyes is back to rely on the same approach he had after a hot start in spring training before the season was cut short.
“I never stopped working,” he said. ‘I did the same things I did in spring school. I just had to trust a little more and see, the results are there. ”
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