Yard Goats' Amador busts out with career day

In a game that contained 29 runs on 33 hits -- including 13 for extra bases -- Adael Amador stood out among the rest on Saturday.

The top Rockies prospect balled out for a career day for Double-A Hartford as he collected five knocks -- including a pair of dingers -- scored four times and finished with a game-high five RBIs as the Yard Goats dropped a 17-12 decision to the Portland Sea Dogs at Hadlock Field in the highest scoring game at the Double-A level so far this season.

"He's back in the leadoff spot and he's feeling more comfortable," Yard Goats hitting coach Zach Osborne said. "I think he's been thinking too much in the box and today it just looked like he had a clear mind and was ready to hit."

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The performance comes as the highly-regarded 21-year-old was amid a slow start to this year's campaign. Amador entered the contest with a single home run and a .145/.313/.176 slash line through his first 37 games for the Yard Goats this season. His performance on Saturday raised his batting average 30 points, tripled his total number of long balls and raised his RBI total by 50 percent.

"Not the start that he wanted or anybody else here wanted him to have, but he's learning a lot through the process," Osborne said. "But he's not one of those guys that shuts down. He's takes care of his defense, always shows up for his early work and he's stayed locked in through all of it and I think it definitely showed today."

Batting out of the leadoff spot for Hartford, Amador provided a spark for the Yard Goats' offense all day. He began the game with a deep fly to dead center off a 3-1 fastball from Red Sox No. 25 prospect Hunter Dobbins that ricocheted off the batter's eye for his second tater of the week.

In the following frame, MLB's No. 33 overall prospect drove in a pair of runs with the bases loaded on a hard hit single into right. He was thrown out at second trying to stretch the play into a double on a well executed 9-4-6 relay by Portland.

Amador led off the fourth with another frozen rope single into right for his third knock in as many plate appearances. He would scamper home four batters later on an RBI single from Zach Kokoska.

After a Portland pitching change in the fifth, Amador greeted Jacob Webb with a mammoth blast to right on the second pitch of the game from the right-hander for a two-run shot.

The native of Santiago, Dominican Republic, wasn't done yet. In the seventh, he found the grass in right with a bloop single for his fifth knock of the game. The hit set a new career high for Amador, who previously recorded a trio of four-hit games since turning pro -- once in 2021, once in 2022 and most recently on June 10 of last year for High-A Spokane.

"Especially after that second home run, he just looked like he had his confidence again," Osborne said. "We were talking in the dugout and he was just super excited for the day he was having. We definitely have to build off of this and continue it now."

One of the youngest players at the Double-A level, Amador will play all of 2024 at age 21. Considered one of the top-ranked players available on the international market during the 2019-20 signing period, he received a $1.5 million bonus to sign with the Rockies. The switch-hitting middle infielder missed seven weeks of the season last year following surgery to repair a broken hamate in his right hand, but still played his way to Hartford at the conclusion of that campaign.