Rodriguez makes history with inside-the-park, three-homer game in Louisville win
Hector Rodriguez sparked Louisville’s rally with an inside-the-park homer, then added two more blasts as the Bats erased a 5-1 hole and beat St. Paul 10-5.
Louisville looked buried at 5-1, then Hector Rodriguez ripped the game open and turned a routine Triple-A afternoon into a franchise night. The Bats erased the deficit and beat St. Paul 10-5 on Wednesday at Louisville Slugger Field, with Rodriguez going 4-for-4 and becoming the first player in Louisville franchise history to hit an inside-the-park home run and a three-homer game in the same contest.
The comeback started with Rodriguez in the first inning, when he opened the scoring with an inside-the-park homer, Louisville’s first inside-the-park shot since Matt McLain did it on April 23, 2023 and the latest one at Louisville Slugger Field since Jose Barrero on Aug. 10, 2021. St. Paul had built its lead behind Kaelen Culpepper’s two-RBI single, Kyler Fedko’s RBI double and Ben Ross’s two-run homer, while Darren McCaughan labored through 4.1 innings for Louisville, allowing five runs on six hits with five walks and four strikeouts.
The game flipped in the sixth, and it flipped fast. Rodriguez launched his second homer of the day, Noelvi Marte followed with a blast of his own, and Michael Toglia completed a back-to-back-to-back run that pulled Louisville within 5-4. That was Louisville’s first three-homer sequence since June 28, 2022, when Alejo Lopez, Taylor Motter and Stuart Fairchild went back-to-back-to-back against Iowa. Michael Chavis then doubled and Francisco Urbaez singled him home to tie it, turning the Bats’ dugout from pressure to belief in a matter of minutes.
Rodriguez finished the statement with authority in the seventh, when he drove his third homer of the day, a 105.2 mph rocket that traveled 381 feet with a 26-degree launch angle, according to MLB video data. He entered the game with nine home runs in 2026 and left with 10, and the production fits the profile that has made him one of Cincinnati’s better young bets. MLB Pipeline ranked Rodriguez as the Reds’ No. 5 prospect and Louisville’s No. 5 prospect, and the left-handed hitter has built his case on contact, aggression and enough bat speed to punish mistakes.
That matters because this was not just a loud box score. Rodriguez, born March 11, 2004, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, signed with the Mets as an international free agent in January 2021 and came to the Reds in the Tyler Naquin trade in July 2022. At 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, he is not the kind of prospect who needs perfect conditions to leave a mark. On Wednesday, he gave Louisville all the proof it needed, and the Bats improved to 29-23 while St. Paul fell to 26-26.
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