Remember April 7, whenever the Pirates' strong jump out of the gate was anchored by a white-hot Bryan Reynolds, who racked up five home runs in the team's first seven games?
Fast forward nearly a month and a half and the Pirates are still outperforming many preseason predictions -- their 13-3 win over the Diamondbacks at PNC Park Friday gave themselves a share of first place in the National League Central again -- and Reynolds finally got home run No. 6.
With the Pirates comfortably ahead, 8-1, in the fifth inning, Reynolds quickly fell behind 0-2 to Anthony Misiewicz, but stayed pesky and eventually worked the count full. After fouling off a pair of fastballs up, Misiewicz left a slider in the upper-third, and Reynolds delivered the dagger:
From April 8 to May 18, Reynolds had slashed .262/.306/.362 with 13 doubles. Derek Shelton has long maintained that Reynolds is going to hit plenty of balls that are going to fall right on that line between a double and a home run, and Reynolds' 15 doubles had him tied for third-most in baseball.
That's not to say Reynolds was just unlucky, though. There's also been a decent amount of swing-and-miss in his game, striking out 31 times in his 144 plate appearances in that stretch. But according to the manager, the shift for Reynolds started Wednesday.
“It started the other day," Shelton explained. "He had a couple hits against [Tigers pitcher Eduardo] Rodriguez. They weren’t balls that he he hit hard. It was just he put the ball in play and found the outfield grass. Then today you really saw the aggressiveness in his swings. With the exception of the first swing, every swing he took was aggressive – even when he was with two strikes. That’s when Bryan Reynolds is going at his best.”