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MLB Awards: Week Five

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The Major League Baseball season is into it’s second full month. April brought us some magical moments, and May has started in a similar fashion. Little is decided in the baseball world in the spring months, but a poor run can still prove costly later in the year.

Our weekly awards aim to pick out the best, most interesting and downright remarkable happenings in baseball over the last seven days…

Performance of the Week

Mookie Betts is 26. He had his fourth three-homer game of his career this week, becoming the youngest player ever to reach that landmark. Oh, and while he was at it, he became the first Red Sox hitter in history to have four three-homer games, passing a certain Ted Williams.

The superstar right fielder currently leads all of baseball in home runs. If that wasn’t enough, he also has more career three-home-run games than Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. Not bad, Mookie.

    

Start of the Week

A first career shutout is a pretty big moment. It’s an even bigger moment when you do it against the reigning World Series champions, just as Luis Severino did this week.

The New York Yankees completed a 3-1 series win in Houston to put them within touching distance of the Boston Red Sox in the American League East. Severino will need another ace-like season if the Yankees are to live up to their potential in 2018.

Nightmare of the Week

Edwin Encarnacion nearly pipped Mookie to performance of the week. In the same game, though, we find our nightmare of the week as Matt Moore was destroyed by the Cleveland Indians.

    

Moore struck out one in four innings, while giving up 10 earned runs. The former All-Star, and once highly-regard prospect, has had some bad starts in his time, but this has to be one of the worst.

Defensive Play of the Week

J.D. Martinez was signed to primarily DH for the Boston Red Sox. The right-handed slugger is one of the best hitters in the game, but his defence has been largely dire. Every metric has Martinez as a liability in left field.

https://twitter.com/statcast/status/992211232181637125

So, when he made this running grab – that Statcast made a five-star catch – it was perhaps the most surprising play of the Major League season to date. It’s up to you whether you put that down to luck or judgement…

Pujols’ Moments

Albert Pujols became the 32nd player in baseball history to amass 3000 Major League hits. The Los Angeles Angel followed Adrian Beltre, Ichiro Suzuki and Alex Rodriguez to make it four straight years with a player reaching the landmark, too.

The future Hall of Famer also joined an elite club of players (he’s only the fourth ever) to hit 600 homers and total over 3000 hits. It wasn’t a crushed dinger for number 3000, though, rather a gentle single to right.

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