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Flores Homers, Finishes First Week In Majors With Nine RBIs

By Joe D.

August 12, 2013 1 Comment

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Congratulations to Wilmer Flores who walloped his first major-league home run on Sunday as the Mets beat the Diamondbacks 9-5.

Flores extended his streak to five straight games with an RBI and also tied the franchise record for most runs batted in with nine in his first six major league appearances. It’s shaping up to be one of the best debuts for a Mets position player in franchise history.

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Flores went 2-for-4 with a walk and three runs scored today as he wrapped up an impressive one week debut. What stuck out the most for me was his ability to barrel up on pitches that were off the plate and make solid contact. It’s quite impressive that in 23 at-bats, Flores has only struck out once while drawing two walks. I loved watching him come back from an 0-2 count and take the walk on Friday. We have something very special here… To see this kind of composure in a 22-year old rookie bodes well for his future success.

Defensively, after a case of the jitters in his first game, Flores has fielded his position well as Terry Collins pointed out today.

 “He’s done fine. He’s made a couple of nice plays to his left, been pretty good,” Collins said. “ He made a nice play on a hard hit ball to his left. He’s done fine. He is not David Wright, but we are not looking for that. We are just looking for him to make the routine play and he has made the routine play.”

While Collins intends to play Flores at second base in the upcoming Dodgers series, he says his bat is definitely one that profiles best at a corner position – something I’ve been hammering for a long while to those who say he doesn’t have enough power to be a first baseman.

“We’re going to try to play him a game at second base, but the way he swings the bat, you look down the road in the future, and mostly likely he’s going to be on the corner — because he’s going to be a run-producing guy,” Collins said. “But I do know we want to see him at second.”

It was quite the week for Flores who has had scouts excited ever since signing with the Mets as a 16-years old free agent from Venezuela. It looks like all the hype was justified and Flores is looking more and more like the franchise player many envisioned him to be, with every sweet swing of his bat.

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