Slam caps Ruiz's two-homer game

Special players tend to do special things when their teams need them most. Keibert Ruiz lands squarely in that category.

MLB's No. 41 overall prospect homered twice, including a go-ahead grand slam, and finished with three hits while tying his career high with five RBIs to power Triple-A Oklahoma City past visiting Salt Lake, 11-8. The blast was Ruiz's first hit this season with the bags juiced and highlighted a 10-run sixth for the Dodgers.

The switch-hitting backstop homered from both sides of the plate in the same game for the second time in his career and the first since 2018.

"I don’t consider home runs to be a huge part of my game," Ruiz said. "I'm not up there trying to hit a home run, especially in that situation. I want to have a good approach, hit the ball hard and keep it simple."

Interestingly, the top Dodgers prospect has had very few opportunities with the bases loaded in his career. Ruiz entered his pivotal at-bat 0-for-2 in with the bags full this season and 5-for-20 (.250) in his career. With two runs in and Oklahoma City still trailing, 6-4, Ruiz worked the count full before parking his 11th home run over the right-field fence.

"I got ahead 3-0 and when that happened, I'm looking for something middle-middle," he said. "I got the pitch I was looking for on 3-2 and I just tried to put a nice swing on it. It was a good result."

Ruiz opened the scoring with a solo shot to left-center on the first pitch he saw in the opening frame. He added a single and a walk but struck out in his final at-bat to prevent him from tying his personal best with four hits. As it stands, his third multi-homer game of the season and sixth of his career leaves him one long ball shy of his high of 12 established in 2018 when he appeared in 101 games.

Ruiz carried over a solid June into the new month. The Venezuela native batted .273 with a .990 OPS, seven jacks and 17 RBIs in 21 games. Overall, Ruiz is batting .290/.373/.645 with 28 RBIs, 28 runs and 22 extra-base hits in 31 games. His impressive statistics to date do not include the six games he spent with Los Angeles in early May, when he went 1-for-7 with a home run.

"Being up the Majors was a great experience for me," Ruiz said. "Hanging around with some really good players, some really good hitters ... that is a big help to me. I was able to see how they do things and deal with situations, especially mentally."

Eight weeks into what is shaping up to be arguably his best season, Ruiz has set no barometers to reach. He just wants to focus on his consistency.

"My goal is to keep my head up the entire year," Ruiz said. "Right now, I'm in a good stretch, but there will be times when I won't be as good. I don't want to think about numbers as a goal. If I start to worry about that, it makes it harder to succeed. I control what I can control and at the end, the numbers should be there."