The Tampa Bay Rays have a legitimate superstar on their hands in Junior Caminero.
And this week, Major League Baseball recognized the 22-year-old third baseman as such. On Monday, Caminero received the American League Player of the Week Award for June 22-June 28. This is the second time Caminero won the award in his career, previously sharing it with Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh on May 31, 2025.
In the National League, Luis Garcia Jr. of the Washington Nationals was named Player of the Week.
Junior Caminero Crushes the Baseball
After seeing brief playing time in 2023 and 2024, Caminero broke out in his first full season last year. As a 21-year-old, he blasted 45 home runs (sixth-most in MLB and third-most in the AL) and logged an impressive .846 OPS, 129 wRC+ and 4.6 fWAR. With the Rays moving from George M. Steinbrenner Field back to the much-more pitcher-friendly Tropicana Field this year, Caminero still hasn't slowed down.
Entering last Monday, Caminero was hitting .280/.373/.484 with 15 home runs, and his production was a driving force behind Tampa Bay's success. But from there, the young third baseman shifted to another gear.
Even with two hitless games, Caminero went 11-for-26 (.426 batting average); of those 11 hits, seven were home runs, giving him a video game-esque 1.231 slugging percentage and 355 wRC+. He became just the fourth player in the modern era of baseball (dating back to 1901) to hit seven home runs in a six-game span at age 22 or younger, joining Boog Powell (1964), Willie Horton (1965) and Bryce Harper (2015).
On Thursday, Caminero became just the eighth player in Rays history to hit three home runs in a game, doing so against the Kansas City Royals. He continued his homer binge during the weekend against the Arizona Diamondbacks, going deep in all three games of Tampa Bay's convincing sweep. The last long ball was the most majestic of all, travelling 463 feet for one of the longest homers in Tropicana Field's history.
The monster week pushed Caminero's season totals to new heights. Entering this week's action, he owns a .292/.384/.548 slash line, 22 home runs, a .397 wOBA, 154 wRC+ and 2.8 fWAR in 81 games. His stellar play has him battling Kazuma Okamoto of the Toronto Blue Jays to be the American League's starting third baseman in the All-Star Game. Most importantly, however, his play led the Rays back to the top of the AL East, when combined with the New York Yankees being swept over the weekend.
Caminero's emergence into a superstar-level hitter comes at the perfect time, as the Rays are playing their first season under new owner Patrick Zalupski. With Zalupski looking to usher in a new era of Rays baseball, he could immediately leave his mark on the franchise by beginning long-term extension talks with Caminero. The young slugger looks like a player the Rays can build around for years to come.
Caminero will try to continue his white-hot hitting this week, which begins on Tuesday in another series against the Royals.
