WEST SACRAMENTO -- Cam Smith came into the Astros’ series against the Athletics at Sutter Health Park in quite the power drought.
Entering play Tuesday, Houston’s standout rookie hadn’t hit a single home run since he hit two of them on April 18. In between, he went 163 plate appearances -- and 43 games -- without leaving the yard.
“It’s been a while,” Smith admitted after Tuesday night's 13-3 rout of the A’s. “It’s been a while.”
Now, that long dry spell could be a distant memory. Smith homered in his first two at-bats, beat out an infield single and roped an RBI double in a career-best four-hit showing.
“It’s a crazy game we play,” Smith said. “Just to get a new opportunity every day, you’ve got to say thank you because you can do something cool every day.”
Smith’s specialty appears to be two-homer nights. Four of his five homers on the season have come in just two games, with his two multi-homer contests in 2025 tied for the second most by an Astros rookie, behind only Yordan Alvarez’s five in 2019. (And it’s only mid-June.)
It’s nothing new, either. Back in 2023, as a freshman at Florida State, Smith hit two homers in a matchup with North Florida -- then hit two more in the Seminoles’ next game, against Virginia Tech. He became the first FSU hitter with two straight multi-homer games since Buster Posey in 2008.
On Tuesday, the Astros rookie went back to his old ways. Smith hit a 415-foot homer off A’s starter JP Sears in the second inning, then blasted a 431-foot dinger off Sears in the fourth. Both homers -- all five of Smith’s homers in 2025, in fact -- were hit to center or left-center field.
For a 6-foot-3 hitter with power who pulls the ball at only a league-average rate, that’s an exciting development for the Astros.
“We know he can drive the ball to right-center field, but it’s about being down on time and trying to catch the ball out in front a little more, trying to drive the ball to left center, and he did that today,” manager Joe Espada said.
Smith said the Astros haven’t specifically worked with him on pulling the baseball but that the skill results from “sticking to a plan” -- a four-word phrase he used three times during his postgame media session.
Whatever that plan was, it worked Tuesday. Smith finished the game 4-for-5, capping his big night with an opposite-field RBI double into the right-field corner in the eighth inning with the game already well out of hand.
Smith’s production came from the No. 7 spot in the Astros’ lineup, and the two hitters below him had big games, too. Second baseman Mauricio Dubón walked twice and came a triple shy of the cycle, going back-to-back with Smith in the fourth inning. Left fielder Cooper Hummel, batting ninth, launched his first home run as an Astro in the seventh.
Of the Astros’ 15 hits, eight came from their Nos. 7-9 batters.
“It just shows we’re a complete team one through nine,” Smith said. “It’s tough when only the top of the order produces, so it just shows what kind of team we are.”
It was a much-needed performance from Smith and the Astros after Monday’s 3-1 walk-off loss, in which Jose Altuve’s first-inning homer was all Houston could muster offensively.
After center fielder Jake Meyers’ two-out, two-run single in the first inning Tuesday got things started, Smith led off both the second and the fourth with homers as the Astros stretched out their lead. A four-run fifth, featuring a two-run dinger from first baseman Christian Walker, broke the game open.
“We drove the ball, got some walks, two-out hits, big RBIs by a ton of guys throughout,” Espada said.
If Smith can continue his power production, it will only deepen an already dangerous lineup. The rookie might not have homered in May, but he still hit .307 and is batting a solid .286 in June.
Smith maintained that Tuesday’s two homers aren’t due to any change to his approach, chalking up his power production to good fortune -- or perhaps favorable winds in West Sacramento.
“Sometimes you get lucky and you get that good ball flight,” he said.
Whatever it was, Smith’s two-month homer drought is over for good -- and it could be just the beginning of a power surge.