Adam Duvall

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Adam Lynn Duvall

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Biographical Information[edit]

Adam Duvall homered in his first game as a major leaguer for the San Francisco Giants on June 26, 2014, hitting a solo shot off Mike Leake of the Cincinnati Reds for his team's lone run in a 3-1 loss. He had been called up a day earlier, just in time to witness Tim Lincecum throw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres as he watched form the bench. He played 28 games for the Giants, hitting .192 with 3 homers and 5 RBIs while spending most of his time at first base. The Giants won the 2014 World Series, but he was not on the postseason roster.

He spent the first four months of 2015 in the minor leagues with the Sacramento RiverCats, where he hit .281 with 25 doubles and 26 homers and drove in 80 runs in 100 games. On July 31st, he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds along with P Keury Mella in return for the man against whom he had hit his first big league homer, Mike Leake. The problem was that he had nothing left to prove in AAA but was joining a team whose two best hitters, 1B Joey Votto and 3B Todd Frazier, played the same positions as he did. The Reds got creative by using him in left field during the last month of the season, and he responded by belting 2 doubles and 5 homers in 64 at-bats in the final weeks of the season.

In 2016, the Reds installed Adam in left field, and he became one of the top surprise stories of the first half, as he belted 20 homers before the end of June and was named the team's sole representative at the 2016 All-Star Game. He hit .241 in 150 games with 33 homers and 103 RBIs. He followed that with a very similar season in which he hit .249 with 31 homers and 99 RBIs in 157 games in 2017. In 2018, he was hitting .205 in 105 games with 15 homers and 61 RBIs on July 30th when he was traded to the Atlanta Braves in return for three players: Lucas Sims, Preston Tucker and Matt Wisler. However, he lost his hitting stroke as a back-up with the Braves, hitting just .132 in 33 games and 53 at-bats. He continued to struggle in 2019 and found himself back in the minors for a stretch, playing 101 games for the Gwinnett Stripers of the International League. He found his power stroke again, hitting .266 with 20 doubles, 32 homers and 93 RBIs. He joined Aristides Aquino and Brandon Barnes as the 2019 International League All-Star outfielders. He was one homer shy of league leader Bobby Bradley. He returned to the Braves for 41 games, where he hit .267 with 10 homers and 19 RBIs, his OPS+ jumping to 115 after having been -5 with the Braves and 70 overall the year before, This time, he was put on the postseason roster and was 3 for 11 with a homer and 5 RBIs in Atlanta's loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in the Division Series.

In the abbreviated 2020 season, he made the team as the fifth outfielder, although with the DH being in universal use that year, it meant that teammate Marcell Ozuna would be a DH almost full-time, and when Ronald Acuna was hurt after a couple of weeks, he began to play regularly. He continued to do well and on September 2nd had the first three-homer game of his career against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, in a 7-5 win. This came a day after Ozuna had become the first National Leaguer to have a three-homer game at Fenway, and marked the first time in baseball history that teammates had hit three homers in consecutive games. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig had done so on consecutive days for the 1930 New York Yankees, but in a span of three games, as there had been a doubleheader involved. He connected off Mike Kickham in the 2nd, Andrew Triggs in the 6th, both with a runner on base, before hitting a solo shot off Ryan Brasier in the 8th. Exactly a week later, on September 9th, he had another three-homer game, this time driving in 9 runs as it included a grand slam, as the Braves demolished the Miami Marlins, 29-9. The 29 runs were a Braves franchise record, and the most scored by a National League team since 1900. Surprisingly, he was the first player in Braves history to have two three-homer games.

He had a solid 2020 season, hitting .237 in 57 games (the team as a whole played 60), with 16 homers and 33 RBIs and an OPS+ of 110. In the postseason, he contributed a key home run in the Braves' two-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds in the Wild Card Series and went 1 for 12 in the three-game sweep of the Miami Marlins in the Division Series. However, in Game 1 of the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, he pulled a a muscle in his side in fouling off a pitch in the 2nd inning and was lost for the remainder of the postseason. The following February 17th, he signed a one-year contract with the Miami Marlins and was their starting right fielder for the first four months of the 2021 season. He did well, hitting 22 homers in 90 games while batting .229 with an OPS+ of 101. However, the Marlins were not able to repeat their surprise feat of the previous year in making the postseason, and decided to sell off some of their veterans at the trading deadline. Adam was traded back to the Braves on July 30th, in return for young C Alex Jackson. He was the fourth outfielder acquired by the Braves in a span of two weeks, following Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler and Eddie Rosario, as they had been making do with a makeshift outfield ever since Ronald Acuna had gone down with a season-ending injury just before the All-Star break. The moves proved timely, as the Braves re-claimed first place in the NL East shortly thereafter. On September 22nd, he appeared to hit his 38th homer of the season in a Braves win over the Arizona Diamondbacks, but it was negated when he passed baserunner Austin Riley between first and second base; Riley thought that CF Jake McCarthy had caught the ball and was retreating back to first when Duvall crossed paths with him, putting himself out and turning the homer into a single. Still, he drove in 45 runs in 55 games for the Braves, and as a result topped the National League with 113 RBIs. These were also the most ever by someone batting below .230, as he ended up with a .228 batting average. Those RBIs came on just 117 hits, one of the highest ratios ever for anyone collecting 100 or more RBIs: only Mark McGwire, with 147 RBIs on 145 hits in 1999, had ever done better in this respect. He was not as productive in the postseason, but did have 13 hits, 3 homers and 10 RBIs in 16 games as the Braves won just their second title since moving to Atlanta in 1966, defeating the Houston Astros in the World Series.

In 2022, he played 86 games for the Braves, batting .213 with 12 homers and 36 RBIs, with an OPS+ of 87. A sprained right wrist bothered him significantly even when he was in the line-up, and forced him to miss the postseason. Following the season, he signed a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox on January 18, 2023. The Red Sox were looking for him to take over the outfield spot vacated by Kiké Hernandez, who was switching back to the infield following the departure of Xander Bogaerts through free agency and the injury to Trevor Story. He got off to a great start in 2023, batting ,455 and slugging 1.030 thanks to 9 extra-base hits in 33 at-bats over his first 8 games; he also drive in 14 runs. However, it came to a crashing halt on April 9th when he broke his left wrist while attempting a diving catch in the outfield. He was expected to be out for a lengthy period as a result.

He has been active in the fight against youth taking PEDs. He sits on the board of the "Taylor Hooton Foundation", named after a young athlete whose suicide was linked to his consumption of anabolic steroids and has been active in advocating a drug-free lifestyle to youngsters. He is also a Type-1 diabetic and contemplated sitting out the 2020 season due to the Coronavirus pandemic, his medical condition putting him in a higher-risk group, but in the end opted to play.

Notable Achievements[edit]

  • NL All-Star (2016)
  • NL Gold Glove Winner (2021/RF)
  • NL RBI Leader (2021)
  • 20-Home Run Seasons: 4 (2016, 2017, 2021 & 2023)
  • 30-Home Run Seasons: 3 (2016, 2017 & 2021)
  • 100 RBI Seasons: 2 (2016 & 2021)
  • Won one World Series with the Atlanta Braves in 2021

Further Reading[edit]

  • Ian Browne: "Red Sox, Duvall agree on one-year deal", mlb.com, January 18, 2023. [1]

Related Sites[edit]

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