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Butler County and peak performance have always gone hand in glove. The last 40 years have seen over a million Corvettes roll off the line at Bowling Green Assembly. Holley Performance's engine control units can be found under the hood of racing machines from NHRA Pro Stock drag cars to NASCAR trucks. We're no slouches in the field of human performance either. Eight-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Cris Carter  tore up the turf at Middletown High School before Earle Bruce made him a Buckeye. Charley Root pitching 201 game wins for the Chicago Cubs has stood as their franchise record since 1941. And in just over a decade - since the team made their 2009 move to Bowling Green - the Tampa Bay Rays-affiliated Hot Rods have seen no less than 75 players make the Majors. Let's have a look at four current stars.

Ryan Carpenter

[Credit: Joel Dinda: Flickr, website, Ryan Carpenter 13 (7063495691), CC BY 2.0]

Carpenter may have come from Glendale AZ, to Bowling Green KY, but his career has taken him further than Rods fans may have expected. In the 2012 season - where the Hot Rods finished second in the Midwest League Eastern Division - he led the team with 11 games won from the mound, tied with Parker Markel. While Markel played one (exhibition) match for the Lotte Giants in South Korea in 2016, before asking for release, Carpenter spent the entirety of the 2020 season in China. He won a Gold Glove playing for the Rakuten Monkeys before pitching up in Korea, spending the last two seasons in the KBO League with the Hanwha Eagles.

Blake Snell

[Credit: Keith Allison: Flickr, e-mail, Twitter, Instagram, website, Blake Snell, Wilson Ramos (41371609524) (cropped), CC BY-SA 2.0]

Rods fans would've been forgiven for missing the potential in Snell, when he featured in the 2013 season. His 4.27 ERA was the worst of his career, and he managed only four wins from 13 games. He moved around the minors and was called up by the Rays to make his debut in 2016 at Yankee Stadium. If you couldn't ask for a bigger debut, the occasion didn't faze Blake, where he retired 12 of the last 14 hitters before the Rays succumbed 3-2 to a Brett Gardner solo homer in the bottom of the ninth. 2018 saw him take the Cy Young award, beating Justin Verlander into second, and a call-up to the All-Star Game. In 2022, you'll find Snell on the San Diego Padres, currently second in the National League West to the Dodgers, rated 92% to make to the playoffs at 538 and a lock for the postseason in the Ladbrokes current betting odds. At the time of writing, the Seattle southpaw has 913 MLB strikeouts under his belt.

Jesús Enrique Sánchez

 [Credit: All-Pro Reels, , Jesus Sanchez Miami Marlins (cropped), CC BY-SA 2.0]

The opposite may be true for Sánchez who had an impressive 2017 at Bowling Green Ballpark, where he had a successful third season (out of four) in the Minors. The Dominican batted .305, logging 82 RBI's and 15 homers in 117 games. Sánchez moved on to the Charlotte Stone Crabs and made the MLB Futures game the season later. The young Sánchez learned to bat left-handed, stemming from a love of David Ortiz's booming bat. On May 30th of this year, Sánchez hit a 496-yard home run for his Miami Marlins vs. the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field; placing him alongside Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the top five longest homers since Statcast began in 2015. 'Papi' would be proud.

Jake Cronenworth

[Credit: Ryan Casey Aguinaldo, Jake Cronenworth pregame 7.10.21, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Fellow Bowling Green alumnus Cronenworth is Snell's compadre at the Padres. The infielder was called up by the Rays in 2019 but traded to San Diego that December without taking the field for Tampa Bay. If he had a point to prove to his old side, he set about making it immediately, with a debut season that saw him tied in second (with the Phillies' Alec Bohm) for NL Rookie of the Year. Being both an effective hitter and defender at multiple positions sees Jake as an integral part of the Padres core, and he'll be hoping to fly under the radar as their opponents worry about new blockbuster signing Juan Soto.

Who'll be the next Hot Rods to rev up to the big leagues? Stay tuned to Beechtree News , where our sports section brings you news, scores and more.