MLB Rankings: Baseball’s Greatest Hits of Week-25
By Bill Felber
MLB Rankings: Greatest Hits in Week-25
6. Ryan Cordell, Chicago White Sox, 41 percent
Cordell is a 27-year-old minor league veteran whose dream to make an opening day roster was finally fulfilled this season. Since then he has found out what life in the big leagues is like: Cordell is batting in the .220s and has never been able to secure a full-time outfield gig.
Facing the Minnesota Twins Tuesday night in Minneapolis, however, Cordell enjoyed that fleeting moment of fame that every career minor league ought to be promised.
The Twins and White Sox were tied 6-6 through 11 innings, both teams having scored in the 11th when Mitch Garver’s sacrifice fly offset Tim Anderson’s home run. Cordell, who had entered the game in the 10th, faced Ryne Harper with one out and Zack Collins on base due to a walk.
It was not, all in all, a promising situation for Chicago since the Sox needed a long ball and Cordell Is not known as along ball hitter. He’s carrying just a .360 slugging average through237 plate appearances with only 15 extra-base hits…that’s one every 16 plate appearances.
But as the cliché goes, anybody with a bat in his hand is dangerous. Cordell got a pitch he liked and drove it over the left-field wall for a two-run home run that gave Chicago an 8-6 lead.
That should have sealed the outcome. But the division leaders struck back with three runs in the bottom of the 12th on five hits capped by a walk-off hit batter when Jose Ruiz grazed Ronald Torreyes’ uniform.
The outcome may have ruined the day for Sox fans, but at least Cordell had his moment in the bright lights.