KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Major League Baseball today announced that Carter Jensen has been named American League Player of the Week for the period of Aug. 31-Sept. 6.
This is Jensen’s first career American League Player of the Week honor and the second by a Royal this season, joining Bobby Witt Jr. (May 4-10). He is the first Royals rookie to earn the award since Vinnie Pasquantino for the period of Aug. 18-24, 2022.
This is the sixth time since the start of 2024 a Royal has won American League Player of the Week, which matches the Athletics, Cleveland and Minnesota for the 4th-most awards among American League teams during that time, trailing New York (12), Boston (8) and Seattle (7).
Jensen, 23, slashed .421/.476/1.158 (8-for-19) in 5 games last week and led the American League in slugging percentage, OPS (1.634), extra-base hits (7) and total bases (22), while ranking 2nd in batting average and tied for 2nd in home runs (3).
Last Wednesday night, Jensen hit his 20th and 21st home runs of the season, recording his 2nd career multi-homer game. The 1st home run marked his 6th leadoff homer of the year, setting the Royals single-season franchise record, while simultaneously making him the 13th rookie catcher in MLB history to hit at least 20 home runs in a season and just the second left-handed hitter to do so, following Matt Nokes (32) in 1987.
Jensen followed up his multi-homer game by falling a single shy of hitting for the cycle in the Royals 7-3 win last Thursday night, marking the 1st game in Royals history in which a catcher had a double, triple and a home run. His 5th-inning home run was his 22nd of the season, tied with Hall of Famer Carlos Beltrán and Royals Hall of Famer Bo Jackson for the 2nd most by a rookie in franchise history, trailing only Bob Hamelin (24).
Jensen has an active streak of 8 consecutive hits for extra bases, which started a week ago and is the longest such streak by a rookie in Royals history and the 2nd-longest streak by a Royals catcher, according to Elias, behind only Fran Healy (10) in 1974.