Scooter Gennett hit four home runs on Tuesday night. “Scooter Gennett” is not an anagram for “Mike Trout.” Though it is only a “u” short of having the letters to spell “get out” and a “d” short of Scrabbling together his traditional position, “second”—which isn’t often associated with power hitting. But it’s several special characters short of what Cincinnati, the team that just signed him, and Milwaukee, the team that just cut him, must have been thinking when he jacked his final pitch of the night over the right-field wall.
I don’t know how the @#$% that happened, either.
Gennett, who is 27 years old, was a sixteenth-round pick of the Brewers in the 2009 draft. He was an average hitter by minor-league standards, but his numbers carried over to his first two years in the bigs. He batted about .300 in 206 games, with 15 home runs and decent defense, and had the makings of an above-average infielder. But his difficulties against lefty pitchers limited his upside once he became a full-time player. And by last season, he wasn’t hitting right-handers all that well, either.
The calendar changed, and so did Gennett’s uniform. The Brewers waived him, and the Reds picked him up in late-March, right before the start of the 2017 season. He competed immediately for playing time as both an infielder and an outfielder: Cincy is in rebuilding mode, and neither Joe Morgan nor Ken Griffey (senior, or junior) are walking through that clubhouse door.
Gennett had contributed some quality innings over 46 games entering Tuesday, offsetting a career-high strikeout rate with a tick more muscle than usual. But he could’ve been playing like the baseball equivalent of a Monstar and it still wouldn’t have foreshadowed him homering four times in a night—a feat only 16 players in MLB history have done before.
That list includes some of the game’s greatest sluggers. A casual baseball fan would recognize one of them, Mike Schmidt. A Martian would recognize Lou Gehrig and Willie Mays. Some of the modern players to achieve the feat include All-Stars Carlos Delgado and Sean Green. The most recent guy to do it was Josh Hamilton—a former MVP.
Last year, Gennett told the baseball statistics site Fangraphs that he wanted to “start hitting the ball harder, and that equates to swinging at better pitches.” Guys who participate in the annual Home Run Derby see the best pitches. And yet in the 2014 event, 2006 MVP Justin Morneau, eventual 2015 MVP Josh Donaldson, Yasiel Puig, and future Derby champion Todd Frazier couldn’t hit four dingers against batting-practice throws.
So scoot. Just for a night.
