Hamilton Named AL Player of the Week

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Arlington, Texas – Major League Baseball announced that the Rangers’ Josh Hamilton has been named the American League Player of the Week for May 7-13. It is the second career weekly award for Hamilton.

Hamilton batted .467 (14-30) with 9 home runs, 2 doubles, 18 RBI, and 10 runs scored in 7 games last week. He led the majors in homers, RBI, extra-base hits (11), slugging (1.433), and total bases (43), and was tied for the lead in hits and runs.

In Tuesday’s game at Baltimore, Hamilton went 5-for-5 with a double, 4 home runs, 8 RBI, 18 total bases, and 4 runs. It was just the 16th four-homer game in major league history, the 14th in the modern era (since 1900), and the 6th ever in the American League. He was just the 3rd player in baseball history to hit 4 multi-run home runs in a single game, first-ever A.L. player to do it, joining the Dodgers’ Gil Hodges in 1950 and the Cardinals’ Mark Whiten in 1993. Hamilton’s 18 total bases in the contest were an A.L. record, just the 3rd player ever with as many total bases in one game.

Hamilton had 9 home runs and 15 RBI over 6 games from May 7-12. According to Elias Sports Bureau, he was just the 3rd player in major league history to reach those minimums in a 6-game span since RBI became an official statistic in 1920. He hit his 18th home run on Saturday in his 31st game of the year, the most ever in a player’s first 31 games in a season.

For the season, Hamilton leads all major league players in batting average (.402), home runs (18), RBI (44), slugging (.866), extra-base hits (23), total bases (110), and OPS (1.321). His current 13-game hit streak is the 2nd-longest of his career.

While Hamilton has been the American League Player of the Month a club-record 4 times with Texas, including taking last month’s award, his only other weekly award came when he shared the honors with teammate Colby Lewis for June 7-13, 2010.

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