MATANZAS, Cuba, Mar 3 (acn) The Cuban baseball athlete Yurisbel Gracial became the first player able to hit 15 or more home runs and steal equal number of bases in the 55th National Baseball Series, fact that first occurs within the current structure of the domestic championship.
Gracial , who to date has 25 steals, hit his fifteenth homer last Wednesday during the third game of the subseries between Matanzas and Isla de la Juventud, at Victoria de Giron stadium.
By achieving the feat which combines power and speed while running the bases, the versatile member of the "Matanzas Crocodiles" was registered as the ninth player who achieves it in the last 15 tournaments of Cuba's national pastime.
Yordanis Samon with 15 homers and 17 steals, Rusney Castillo (16 and 22) and Alexei Bell (18 and 16) were the last ones to reach the difficult mix in the 51st Series, which featured 96 games in its qualifying stage, unlike the 87 games of the current tourney (including the two phases).
According to data provided by statistician Yirandy Rodríguez, other players who got the 15-15 mark in the last 15 seasons were Adonis Garcia in the 49th series (21 and 17), Alfredo Despaigne in the 48th (32 and 16) and Yohenis Cespedes in the 46th (17 and 15).
The list also includes Yulieski Gourriel in the 45th (27 and 21); Eduardo Paret in the 40th (16 and 31) and it also repeated Rusney Castle at the 50 th (18 and 29) and Alexei Bell in the 49th and 47 th (20 and 22) and (31 and 25) respectively.
To Gracial, the fact may go unnoticed because in recent statements to ACN he noted he was not fully aware of the stats, "to me it only matters to play and give everything for the team," he said.
In this series, Yurisbel Gracial García has a batting average of .326, is leader in runs created with 116, deputy leader in runs scored with 69, third in slugging with .563 and fourth in RBIs with 62.
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