There’s a long list of brothers who’ve had overlapping careers in the major leagues, from Hank and Tommie Aaron to Felipe, Matty, and Jesus Alou to B.J. and Justin Upton. In fact, Baseball-Almanac lists over 350 groupings of related players, of which the Astros’ Yuli Gurriel and Blue Jays’ Lourdes Gurriel Jr. are only one of the most recent. Although the brothers have yet to play on the same MLB roster, they still found a way to make history together after recording separate multi-homer performances for their respective teams on Friday -- a first for any set of brothers in major league history.
Both brothers kicked off their performances with moonshots in the first inning. Lourdes pounced on a 99.1-MPH fastball from the Rays’ Diego Castillo and parked it 450 feet away in the center field seats of Rogers Centre, while Yuli muscled a 368-footer out to right field in Minute Maid Park for a grand slam, his second of the year.
In the fourth inning, with the Blue Jays hanging onto a one-run lead, Lourdes returned with another solo shot, this one a 415-foot drive off of rookie lefty Jalen Beeks. He tacked on another base hit in the sixth and finished his night 3-for-4 with a pair of RBI.
Yuli, meanwhile, saved his final home run for the third inning. Backed by a 4-0 lead over the Angels, the result of his first-inning heroics, he crushed a curveball from lefty reliever Andrew Heaney and drove in Marwin Gonzalez to boost the Astros’ advantage to six runs. Like his brother, he also added another base hit to his total for the night and finished 3-for-4 with seven RBI. Of course, there was one perk Yuli got that his younger brother didn’t -- bragging rights after the Astros clinched a playoff spot with their 11-3 win over the Angels.
