Loperfido earns PCL weekly honors after three-homer, seven-RBI outburst

Joey Loperfido did more than win a weekly award in Triple-A. He used a six-game run in Albuquerque to make the Houston Astros keep looking his way.

The Sugar Land Space Cowboys infielder/outfielder was named Pacific Coast League Player of the Week for April 8 through April 14 after punishing the Albuquerque Isotopes from April 9 through 14. Over that stretch, Loperfido went 11-for-26 and posted a .423/.559/1.077 line with a 1.636 OPS, two doubles, five home runs, 13 RBI, 14 runs scored, six walks, a stolen base and two hit-by-pitches. He reached base safely in every game, had multiple hits in four of the six contests and homered in three of them.

The night that made the week impossible to ignore came April 12, when Loperfido delivered a career-high three-homer game that included a grand slam. He drove in seven runs that night, another personal best, and turned a regular-season game in Albuquerque into a reminder of how quickly one hitter can reshape a series. By the end of the week, he led the PCL in home runs, RBI, total bases and runs scored, while ranking near the top of the league in slugging, OPS, hits and walks. His 13 RBI were the most in Triple-A, and no other player at the level reached double digits during the same week.

For Sugar Land, the production was bigger than a hot streak. Loperfido, the Astros’ No. 6 prospect, gave the Space Cowboys a middle-of-the-order force who was driving games with power and discipline at the same time. He was originally drafted by Houston in the seventh round of the 2021 Draft out of Duke University, and this was his second career Player of the Week honor after he previously won in the South Atlantic League on Aug. 14, 2022.

The surge also fit into a larger April run that already had his name circulating throughout the organization. Loperfido finished the month with 13 home runs, a total that led all of baseball, major or minor, and he was named the Astros’ Upper-Level Minor League Player of the Month for April. MiLB also noted that he recorded three multi-homer games in his first 25 games with Sugar Land and later became just the seventh player in Astros history to drive in at least two runs in his major league debut on April 30, 2024.

That is the kind of week that moves a player from hot hand to real consideration. Loperfido did not just fill up a box score in Albuquerque; he put himself back in the center of Houston’s long-term conversation with a stretch too loud to dismiss.