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During his time at the University of Nebraska, Gordon was a member of the 2004 United States national baseball team, which included players from 15 different colleges. He helped lead Team USA to an 18–7 overall record, seeing the majority of his playing time at first base. The Royals placed Gordon on the 15-day disabled list on August 23 because of a torn muscle in his right quadriceps. He would not return to Kansas City until September 12, although he did hit .311 in the month of September.
Alex Presley of the Detroit Tigers tied the mark shortly before with his fifth-inning homer off Oakland Athletics pitcher Daniel Gossett. The second-largest hit by cWPA throughout the Royals’ two-year playoff run, this is one of the most memorable hits by any player in recent World Series history. Someday there will be a statue of it in Kauffman Stadium—as there should.
Top Leagues
He had thrown 9 2/3 shutout innings this postseason entering Game 1, tallying five saves. Gordon's home run off Toronto reliever Ryan Tepera broke a mark set in 2000 at the height of the Steroids Era. The drive, which drove in the last run in the Royals' 5-2 loss, was his eighth this season and the 159th of his 11-year big league career.
The Royals moved Gordon through the minor league system quickly, and he made his major league debut in 2007. In his first major league at-bat, Gordon struck out with the bases loaded against Curt Schilling but eventually got his first major league hit on April 5, 2007, against the Boston Red Sox. On April 10, 2007, he hit his first major league home run off pitcher Josh Towers of the Toronto Blue Jays. Alex Gordon struck the decisive blow with a solo home run off Orioles righty Darren O'Day to lead off the top of the 10th to break a 5-5 tie. It was Gordon’s heroics that book-ended Kansas City’s victory. The Orioles got one run back in the bottom of the third only to have Gordon stifle their rally with a sliding, inning-ending catch of a drive to the leftfield gap by Steve Pearce.
Career Regular Season
The Orioles then tied the game in the bottom of the sixth, as ninth-place hitter Jonathan Schoop drew a walk off Royals lefty Brandon Finnegan, then came home after singles by Nick Markakis and Alejandro De Aza. Gordon hit a home run off of Luke Gregerson in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 2015 AL Divisional Series. The Royals would go on defeat the Astros in five games, and would defeat the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Champsionship Series. In Game 1 of the 2015 World Series, Gordon hit a ninth-inning home run off of New York Mets closer Jeurys Familia to tie the game at 4. Gordon became a World Champion when the Royals won the World Series in five games over the Mets, the first World Series won by the Royals since 1985. Combined in the postseason, Gordon hit .241 with 2 homers, 6 RBI and a .775 OPS.
Rusty Kuntz, a coach in the Royals' organization stated that "If he can catch a fly ball in this mess, he’s going to be OK." While playing for Omaha, Gordon was named to the Pacific Coast League's All-Star team. Gordon was recalled from Triple-A on July 23, 2010, to take the place of David DeJesus in the Royals' outfield; DeJesus had been placed on the disabled list with a right thumb sprain. On July 30, Gordon hit his first career walk-off home run in a game against the Baltimore Orioles. Gordon hit .264 in the month of August, but then slumped to a .177 batting average during September.
Statcast: How Gordon crushed Familia's quick pitch
Against a pitcher larger than life, in a moment larger than life. For a moment, it brought back the magic, even against the wizard who calmed it. History has been kind to Gordon and third base coach Mike Jirschele, as Kansas City’s 2015 World Series win has alleviated the “what if” factor of this play. History has also made watching this play more tolerable, letting us focus on just how bonkers it was rather than dwell on the pain of the next plate appearance. WPA is a measure of the difference in win probability before and after an event. If the team’s win probability before a hit is 40% and the win probability after a hit is 50%, for instance, the hit’s WPA is .10, because it added 10% to the overall win probability.
This season already has set records for the number of players with at least 10 home runs and 15 home runs; a new record for 20-homer seasons is in sight. In 2014, there were 57 players with 20-plus home runs; after Tuesday's games, 110 players have hit 20 or more . Alexander Jonathan Gordon is an American former professional baseball left fielder who played his entire career for the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball from 2007 to 2020. Prior to playing professionally, Gordon attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he played college baseball for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Player Value--Batting
However, Britton and O’Day wriggled out of the jam via ground balls off the bats of Eric Hosmer (a force-out at home) and Billy Butler (an inning-ending double play). Fortunately for the Royals, the relief pitching of Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis, who combined to record 12 straight outs after De Aza’s game-tying single off Finnegan, gave the Royals all the chances they needed to take the lead. Gordon was drafted in 2005 by the Kansas City Royals with the second pick overall, becoming the highest draft pick out of Nebraska since Darin Erstad was selected with the first pick of the 1995 Major League Baseball draft. He hit 29 home runs and stole 22 bases with an on-base plus slugging over 1.000 in his first full season in minor league baseball with the Double-A Wichita Wranglers.
Following a broken thumb suffered in Spring Training, Gordon began the 2010 season on a minor league rehab assignment with Class-A Advanced Wilmington. He was demoted to the minor leagues in May, where he played left field. Gordon had been hitting .194 before his demotion, and many considered this demotion to indicate that Gordon was running out of chances with the Royals.
Without it, Royals fans wouldn't have hung around for more than five hours of baseball, and left Kauffman Stadium both exhilarated and exhausted. "I didn't know he had a quick pitch until he did it to Salvy," said Gordon. To ground out leading off the inning, Gordon picked up on Familia's tendency to use a quick pitch. "You're not going to make a whole lot of money hitting the ball on the ground in this league because the defenders are so quick and athletic. You've got to get the ball in the air, I think, if you're going to be successful." Holding the ball he hit over the right-field wall, Gordon said he didn't plan to keep the historic memento or anything else from the game. Gordon said he heard talk of the record on a clubhouse television after Toronto's Darwin Barney homered in the sixth.
Stanton has a chance to become the first player to reach 60 since Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa in 2001. Stanton belted 18 home runs in August, becoming the third player to hit 18 in a calendar month . He also joined Bonds as the only players to hit 30 home runs in fewer than 50 games. Rookies have also been major contributors, led by Aaron Judge, who has 44 home runs and has a chance to break Mark McGwire's rookie record of 49 set in 1987. Rookies have hit 711 home runs, the most ever and nearly twice as many as rookies hit in 2000. With 38 home runs, Cody Bellinger was tied for third-most ever by a rookie.
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