Hickory Infielder Wins South Atlantic League Honor

Hickory Crawdads infielder Cristian Inoa was named the South Atlantic League Player of the Week for July 25-31, the Texas Rangers announced on Monday.

Inoa, 22, went 12-for-20 (.600) with three home runs and six RBI in five games for Hickory, the Rangers’ High Class-A affiliate last week.

Inoa is experiencing a career season for his professional career, when it comes to his batting slash numbers — .304/.369/.476/.845. He has nine home runs and 45 RBI this season, putting him close to his single-season career highs of 11 home runs and 58 RBI, which were set last year at Low Class-A Down East.

The Rangers signed the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic product on July 4, 2015, and assigned him to the Dominican Summer League Rangers in 2016, where he batted .282/.384/.403/.787 with three home runs and 21 RBI.

In 2017, he spent the full season with the Rangers Short Class-A team in Spokane, where he batted .213/.263/.329/.592 with four home runs and 31 RBI.

He played for four different teams in 2018 — Spokane, Hickory, Frisco and Round Rock — and he played the bulk of the season with Spokane. Overall he batted .228/.326/.306/.632 with two home runs and 14 RBI.

He returned in Spokane in 2019 and hit .199/.283/.291/.574 with two home runs and 19 RBI before the 2020 season was wiped out by COVID-19.

He returned to Down East for 2021 and earned a promotion to Hickory for this season after batting .292/.353/.469/.822.

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