MLB

Mookie Betts Just Made Boston Red Sox History

Ben Bruno  —  @BenBBruno Jun 1st, 2016
Betts hit three home runs on Tuesday, making history in the process.

If you watched Tuesday's game between the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles, you happened to see something that had never been done before in the storied history of the Red Sox. The person in charge of rewriting the history books? Mookie Betts.

Just watch.

Hitting three home runs in a single game is an incredible feat in itself, but as Boston's leadoff hitter, it was something that had yet to happen.

The three home run performance in just one game is more long balls than 27 qualified hitters have for the season. Betts now has 12 taters this year, which is the 16th most, and puts him on pace to fly by his career high of 18 hit a season ago.

Betts received regular playing time for the first time in his career in 2015 and showed he was deserving of it, slashing .291/.341/.479 with a .351 wOBA, 21 steals, and a 4.8 Wins Above Replacement (fWAR). His average (.283) and on-base percentage (.325) are both down this season, but he's been making up the difference with his power.

Betts has improved his Isolated Power from .188 in 2015 to .239 this season and his slugging percentage from .479 to .522. However, his batted ball profile has remained the same except for in one area.

He's hitting about four percent more ground balls and four percent less fly balls this season compared to 2015, but despite the decrease in fly balls, his home-run-to-fly-ball ratio (HR/FB) has more than doubled what it was in his first two seasons in the big leagues, going from 8.2 percent to 16.9 percent.

Betts' (HR/FB) ratio doesn't even put him in the top-50, so it's not so high it's unsustainable, and the jump this season could simply be that Betts got stronger. His ability to drive the ball has been there -- his 42 doubles in 2015 were the sixth-most -- and so far this season those drives are leaving the stadium more frequently. And in last night's case, to all parts of the field.

Betts hit each of his home runs to a different part of the stadium -- center field, left field, and right field.

He became the first player to accomplish this feat in the last five seasons, and the first to do it in 2016.

Our model doesn't see Betts slowing down much over the remaining course of the season, projecting him to hit .285/.341/.469 with 14 home runs and a .351 wOBA over the remaining course of the season. He already has a 2.1 fWAR, which puts him on pace for a 6.5 fWAR for a full season, something only 10 hitters did last season.

He's becoming one of baseball's best hitters, and oh, he's not so bad with the glove either, as we got to see Tuesday night.