The last time I talked about Albert Almora Jr. I was complaining about how Joe Maddon insisted on starting him against right-handed pitchers and batting fifth despite his awful numbers since the start of July. Well, since then Almora has shut me up pretty good and hopefully he does it again because there’s no way he’s going to do what he accomplished on Wednesday again.
So, in the second game of their quick two-game set against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Cubs won 8-4, making Junior Guerra exit after only pitching 3.2 innings. The Cubs had nine hits off Guerra and surprisingly the only walk off of him was by Almora.
Entering Wednesday’s game, Almora only had 19 walks all season. Anyway, he walked once against Guerra and then again off Dan Jennings.
That was Almora’s first multi-walk game of the season, but surprisingly it’s not the first of his career.
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I went back and found out that last June, Almora actually had two games in which he walked at least twice. They came within a week of each other.
Believe it or not, Albert Almora Jr. actually had 2 multi-walk games before Wednesday vs. MIL. In 2017, he walked twice on 6/19 vs. SD and on 6/26 Almora walked 3 times vs. WSH.
By the way after the 3 BBs on June 26, Almora only walked 2 more times the rest of 2017 lol.
— Aldo Soto (@AldoSoto21) August 16, 2018
I mean, that’s not really surprising because Almora has always been an aggressive hitter. He’s never been a patient batter and that’s mostly been fine because he’s been able to keep a high average throughout his career.
But again, three multi-walk games in nearly 300 career MLB games is crazy, but he has three of them.
What I don’t think will ever happen again is Almora walking twice AND hitting a home run in the same game.
Almora isn’t much of a power hitter, as that was his fifth of the season and 16th of his career. I’m pretty positive that he’s never homered and walked just once in the same game yet alone drawing two free passes in a single game.
But again, I’d love to look dumb and have Almora do the same thing the next time he plays.
Anyway, here’s a dumb video I made with Almora in it.
The #Cubs like to party, featuring Albert Almora Jr. pic.twitter.com/LAVFm9gmoW
— Aldo Soto (@AldoSoto21) August 15, 2018