Jon Griffin, a 25-year-old first baseman for the Mobile BayBears, isn’t a very highly ranked prospect, but that didn’t stop him from getting some national attention.
The Arizona Diamondbacks’ Double-A affiliate was playing the Tennessee Smokies (a Chicago Cubs affiliate) on Wednesday night, and it was a standard baseball game going into the fifth inning, with the BayBears up 6-3. But once the top of the fifth rolled around, Griffin started to do something that’s only been done once before in the Southern League.
Griffin hit four home runs in just five innings.
The BayBears won 17-7, with many of those runs being thanks to Griffin, who hit solo shots in the fifth and sixth, a two-run jack in the seventh and a one-run homer in the ninth. He finished the game 5-for-6 with seven RBIs.
George Kalafatis was the first Southern Leaguer to hit four home runs in a game, doing it on July 1, 1969 for the now-defunct Montgomery Rebels.
Griffin also overshadowed Smokies third baseman Kris Bryant, who hit his Double-A-leading 12th home run in the first inning.
