Robinson Cano has had an illustrious career in the big leagues.
He's been selected to the All-Star team eight times. He's won two Gold Gloves. He's finished top-five in MVP voting four times, and, of course, he won a World Series with the Yankees in 2009.
But in Tuesday night's win over the Padres, Cano did something he'd never done before, slamming three home runs en route to a 5-2 win.
Cano's first two homers of the night came off of Padres starter Chris Paddack, and his third - a seventh-inning home run off of Logan Allen - put the Mets out in front 5-0 and sent the Citi Field crowd into a frenzy.
"As a player, sometimes there are things you want to accomplish to see how it feels, but for me the biggest thing was for the team to win a game," Cano said afterwards. "It's all about winning here and being able to stay in the race.
"Like I said, as a player there are a lot of things in the game that you'd like to do it to see how it feels, and this sort of feels good. It was good, one, that it was at home, and secondly the first game of the series, you're able to go win the first game."
It's no secret that Cano has struggled during his first season in Flushing, entering the game with a .243 batting average and just six home runs, both very low compared to his typical numbers.
But in just one night, Cano increased his season home run total by 50% from six to nine, and he's now hit five home runs in his last nine games after hitting just four home runs in his first 66 games.
"It was hard for me to get four almost half of the season. I wasn't thinking about another homer," he said about his final at-bat in the seventh. "I was just thinking about getting something over the plate and put a good swing.
"There's nothing different, it's just that they're falling and things are going my way. I've been feeling the same way at the plate … I always stay positive and I know how hard I work in the offseason … I know that one day it's going to turn around because I really put in good work in the offseason."
His manager agreed that things were bound to turn around for one of the most prolific hitters to ever play the second base position.
"His stretches are really good," Mickey Callaway said after the game. "You don't hit three homers if you're declining when you've never done it in your career, so the power is there, the swing is there, the hands are there.
"He went through a tough stretch, and a lot of players do that. Robinson Cano probably hasn't been through many of them in his career, almost everybody else has. It stands out a little bit more when it happens to a player like Robbie, but he's going to right the ship and he has."