ST. PETERSBURG -- Junior Caminero lifted and lowered his left leg, turned his body and unleashed the kind of swing he’s understandably become known for. Quick, powerful, ferocious. He kept his left arm extended and watched the ball fly out toward the netting hundreds of feet away, bound for a landing spot few can even hope to reach.
“I just hit the ball as hard as I could, gave it everything I had,” Caminero said through interpreter Kevin Vera.
Surely by now you’ve watched the viral video of the ball he golfed into orbit on a rare Wednesday night off at Topgolf, right? Well, wait until you see what he did to a pair of baseballs in the Rays’ 6-2 win over the Twins on Friday night at Tropicana Field.
Facing former teammate Taj Bradley in the first inning, Caminero took three straight pitches to get ahead in the count, then unloaded on a high, 97.5 mph fastball over the middle and just above the strike zone. The ball erupted off his bat at 111 mph and sailed straight out to center field, arcing over the batter’s eye and landing on the protective netting over the Budweiser Porch.
Caminero’s seventh home run of the season traveled a projected 450 feet, according to Statcast. It was the longest homer of his young career, the longest at the Trop since a 452-footer by Josh Lowe on Aug. 24, 2023, and the longest by a Rays hitter since Brandon Lowe blasted one 458 feet against the A’s last August.
That was the first home run allowed by Bradley all season, but Caminero and Jonathan Aranda did their part to add to that total with a pair of multihomer games -- Caminero’s fifth and the first of Aranda’s career.
It was the Rays’ first game with multiple players recording multi-homer performances since Mike Zunino and Nelson Cruz did so in Boston on Sept. 7, 2021. It was only their second such performance at Tropicana Field, as Ryan Hanigan and Wil Myers each went deep twice against the Yankees on April 19, 2014.
Caminero capped the offensive outburst with a two-run, 435-foot shot to center off Bradley one pitch after he pulled one just foul down the left-field line.
In the fourth, Aranda lifted an inside fastball a projected 402 feet into the right-field seats. He delivered a nearly identical solo shot in the sixth inning, this time launching an inside curveball a projected 414 feet to right off Bradley for his second homer of the night and sixth of the season.
Starter Drew Rasmussen handled the heavy lifting on the mound, holding the Twins to just one run on five hits and one walk while striking out six over six innings.
The right-hander found himself in trouble in the fourth after giving up a leadoff single followed immediately by a double, but he calmly struck out Victor Caratini and Kody Clemens -- both on the kick-changeup he developed this offseason -- before second baseman Ben Williamson ran a long way to snag a Royce Lewis popup in shallow right field.