Beltre Named AL Player of the Week

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Arlington, Texas – Major League Baseball announced today that the Rangers’ Adrian Beltre has been named the American League Player of the Week for August 20-26. It is the third career weekly award for Beltre, his first in the American League.

Beltre batted .433 (13-30) with 5 homers, 3 doubles, a triple, 7 runs, and 9 RBI in 7 games last week, when the Rangers had a 5-2 record. He led the majors in slugging (1.100), OPS (1.533), total bases (33), extra-base hits (9), home runs (tied-5), and hits (tied-13). His 9 RBI were T2nd-most in the majors last week, trailing only teammate Mitch Moreland (10). Beltre posted 3 go-ahead RBI and 2 game-winning RBI while recording the A.L.’s 4th-highest batting average. He had just 2 strikeouts last week.

Over a 3-game span from Wednesday through Friday, Beltre went 10-for-14 with 5 home runs, 2 doubles, a triple, 9 RBI, and 6 runs, a stretch which included a 3-homer game and a cycle. According to Elias Sports Bureau, he joined Joe DiMaggio (1948) as the only players in major league history to have a 3-homer game and a cycle in the same week.

He hit 3 home runs on Wednesday vs. Baltimore, his first regular season 3-homer game, although he hit 3 home runs in Game 4 of the 2011 American League Championship Series vs. Tampa Bay. He joins Albert Pujols, George Brett, Reggie Jackson, and Babe Ruth as the only players with 3-homer games in both the regular and postseason, with Beltre and Pujols the only right-handed batters to do it. He homered twice in the 4th inning of Wednesday’s contest, just the 2nd player in Rangers history with multiple home runs in an inning.

Beltre hit for the cycle on Friday vs. Minnesota. It was the second cycle of his career, with the other also done at Rangers Ballpark as a member of the Mariners on September 1, 2008. He became the first player in the modern era (since 1900) to cycle in the same park both as a home and visiting player. He is the 23rd player in the modern era to have multiple cycles in a career.

Beltre has won a pair of Player of the Month Awards (N.L. in Sept. 2004; A.L. in Sept. 2011), but this is just his third career weekly honor. The others both came in the National League: Aug. 21-27, 2000, and June 21-27, 2004 (shared with Houston’s Roy Oswalt).

It marks the second time this season for a Texas player to win the weekly award, the other Josh Hamilton for May 7-13.

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