The Chicago White Sox became the 10th team in Major League Baseball history to hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs as part of their Sunday afternoon game against the St. Louis Cardinals (GameTracker). The White Sox are the second franchise to hit four homers in a row twice, too, joining the Washington Nationals, according to Christopher Kamka of NBC Sports Chicago.
The fireworks went off (and off and off and off) in the bottom of the fifth inning. The Cardinals were down 1-0 when they inserted reliever Roel Ramirez, a 25-year-old making his MLB debut. Ramirez was able to retire Luis Robert without much trouble. That's when things went downhill.
Take a look at the rest of Ramirez's outing in play-by-play form:
- Nomar Mazara singled to center
- Danny Mendick singled to right-center, Mazara advanced to third
- Mendick was caught stealing at second (second out)
- Tim Anderson walked
- Yoan Moncada homered, scoring himself, Mazara, and Anderson
- Yasmani Grandal homered
- Jose Abreu homered
- Eloy Jimenez homered.
The exit velocities on those home runs were, in order: 105, 108, 112, and 101 mph. In other words, those balls were smoked.
Boy, that escalated quickly. pic.twitter.com/8Z7tUerwbc
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) August 16, 2020
The other time the White Sox hit four consecutive home runs came nearly 12 years to the day, on Aug. 14, 2008. Jim Thome, Paul Konerko, Alexei Ramirez, and Juan Uribe combined to do the honors then against Joel Peralta and Rob Tejeda of the Kansas City Royals. Three of those home runs were launched off Peralta before Tejeda checked in and gave up the final dinger.
Both pitchers went on to have several successful seasons thereafter, so there's hope for Ramirez. He was part of the return on the trade that sent Tommy Pham to the Tampa Bay Rays in July 2018. His contract was purchased from the alternate site during the Cardinals' two-week hiatus caused by the team-wide COVID-19 outbreak.
Prior to the start of the season, FanGraphs ranked Ramirez as the 22nd-best prospect in the Cardinals system, noting that "his fastball has cut action rather than ride/carry, so it accidentally runs into barrels." Indeed.
