Junior Caminero has turned this Rays-Astros series into his own personal batting practice session. The 22-year-old third baseman keeps running into pitches and depositing them into the seats, and Houston keeps having no answer for it.
Caminero rounds the bases on a 374-foot blast that put the Rays up 2-1.
That one alone would've been a nice night's work. Fans are noticing the pattern too -- one guy on Twitter admitted he bet on Caminero to go deep the day after a 5-game homer streak, whiffed on the pick, then watched him do it anyway the next day. Classic case of #ThatsBaseball.
Bet on Caminero to home run yesterday after a 5 game streak. Missed. Hit today. #ThatsBaseball
Then Caminero topped himself. A 437-foot moonshot at 107.5 mph off the bat pushed his home run streak to a genuinely absurd 11 homers in 11 games -- the kind of heater that gets a guy's name mentioned in the same breath as some of the game's best power hitters, and he's doing it against a Houston pitching staff that's usually stingy about this stuff.
Caminero's 437-foot blast at Daikin Park extended his streak to 11 homers in as many games.
Houston wasn't just going to sit there and take it, though. Yordan Alvarez has spent this series reminding everyone he's still the scariest bat in that lineup, and he delivered the exclamation point with a walk-off homer that flipped the whole series storyline in one swing -- the Astros mobbing him at the plate after turning an 8-10 deficit into a finish nobody saw coming.
Yordan Alvarez ends it with a walk-off home run as his teammates swarm him at the plate.
So now it's a real duel. Caminero's got the volume -- 11 homers in 11 games is a video-game stat line -- but Alvarez just showed he can end a game with one swing whenever he feels like it. However this series wraps up, both guys are making a strong case they're the best power hitter on the field right now.