'It feels great': O'Hoppe continues power barrage in Double-A
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After hitting only two homers through his first 25 games, Logan O’Hoppe is finding his power stroke.
The Phillies’ No. 5 prospect continued his home run tirade on Friday, blasting his fifth dinger in four games in a 2-for-4 night in Double-A Reading’s 6-2 loss to Somerset. He has six long balls in his last six contests to give him eight on the season.
“It feels a little weird, to be honest with you,” O’Hoppe said. “Nothing like this has happened in my career so far so I’m just trying not to overthink it and trying to ride it out.”
After singling in his first at-bat, O’Hoppe hammered an 0-2 fastball from Patriots righty Randy Vasquez (NYY 15) over the wall in left-center for a solo homer that put the Fightins on the board. All eight of his long balls have gone to left field.
“I haven’t been trying to hit them,” O’Hoppe said. “Tyler Henson, our hitting coach, has been trying to help me a lot, and we’ve made some adjustments; not so much in my swing, but just my approach as far as what I’m looking for, and it’s really helped. He’s a great brain to learn from.”
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The backstop has strung together four multihit games in a row to go with a six-game hitting streak. He’s also reached base in 24 games to go with a .297 average, .977 OPS, 14 extra-base hits, 14 walks and as many RBIs (22) as strikeouts.
O’Hoppe is coming off a strong 2021 campaign, where he jumped from High-A to Triple-A with a .270/.331/.458 line in 104 games and followed it up with a .299/.440/.519 line with three homers and the second-most walks (21) in 22 Arizona Fall League games. The 22-year-old smacked a career-high 17 homers in ‘21 after never hitting more than five in a season prior, and he’s nearly halfway to that total through 31 games this year.
“It feels great,” O’Hoppe said of his recent performance. “One of my goals coming into this offseason was to continue that way of thinking and keep the same thoughts in my head that I had in the Fall League, because I felt pretty good playing the game out there. Luckily I’ve been able to do that and hopefully I’ll keep it up going forward.”