In one of the rarest of baseball’s feats, Orioles #2 prospect Manny Machado hit for the cycle in a game for Bowie on Saturday night. Apparently it was late in the game and he was a home run away from the cycle when Machado sent a blast deep over the left field wall that actually ended up being the game winning homer. Obviously this is pretty cool because not often does a guy hit for the cycle at the professional level and it’s especially exciting because it is one of our top prospects. Manny was also just named the Eastern League player of the week due to his fantastic overall week which was no doubt capped off by this performance.

Machado has actually been somewhat of a disappoint to some fans due to his relatively unimpressive stats in AA-Bowie. I am too lazy to look up the exact stats but I think he is hitting around .250 with average power numbers and has a fairly high average total (had 2 in this game). Theres also plenty of people who are saying not to worry about it because he is so young (only 19) and is one of the youngest players in that league and is doing fine for his age. Personally I think that each player is different and either way after being an O’s fan for the last however many years I really don’t believe a prospect is good until they perform at the major league level. I’m sure he has the potential to be a star and really isn’t doing too bad for his age in that league, but I guess so many years of being an O’s fan has caused me to have automatic skepticism.

Really though this day is more about the phenomenal feat that he pulled off that is hitting for the cycle because few people do it. That and him being named his league’s player of the week, one thing I can say for sure was that it was a good week for Manny.