The Softest, Wimpiest Hits and Home Runs
On April 26, Anthony Rizzo smacked his sixth, seventh, and eighth home runs of the 2022 season, catapulting himself into the major-league lead. Impressive, right? It certainly appears that way in the box score, but it was actually the least majestic three-homer game imaginable. That’s not a putdown; it’s like calling someone the slowest Indy 500 winner or the weakest championship bodybuilder. The feat in and of itself is hallowed, but here are his distances and expected batting averages per Statcast (xBA):
- 346 feet, .180 xBA
- 378 feet, .380 xBA
- 327 feet, .010 xBA
Clearly, he used the short right-field wall in Yankee Stadium to his fullest advantage. The last one was especially dinky, just barely clearing the “4” in the “314 ft.” sign:
A batted ball with an .010 xBA based on launch angle and exit velocity means that 99% of similar batted balls are outs. Since Statcast started measuring such things, this is only the sixth home run ever hit with a .010 xBA. Still, it counts the same as an upper-deck moonshot.
Everyone loves watching someone obliterate a baseball to humanity’s greatest possible extent, but there’s a headshaking beauty to chip shots like Rizzo’s. Here’s the shortest dinger ever captured by Statcast, a 302 ft. squeaker around the Pesky Pole by Lorenzo Cain in 2017:
In any other park, Mookie Betts would’ve caught the ball. Even if not, it’s a double, because it would’ve landed several yards away from the foul pole.
Neither Rizzo nor Cain hit their homers terribly hard, but in 2019, Eugenio Suarez set a new bar for softest-contact dingers:
This dink shot traveled an estimated 340 feet, but its 86.7 mph exit velocity is the lowest ever for a ball that cleared the wall. Weather conditions must’ve been just right for the ball to carry as far as possible that day. The juiced baseballs in 2019 certainly helped as well.
The funny thing about baseball is that a player can sometimes do everything wrong and still make good. Every batter tries to hit the ball as hard as possible, but in 2021, Adam Eaton singled on this cue shot:
With an exit velocity of 13.7 mph, it’s the softest base hit ever recorded, excluding bunts.
What about the slowest extra base hit? It’s this 29.0 mph hustle double by Shohei Ohtani from last season:
It should come as no surprise that this is yet another feat only Ohtani can accomplish, albeit not as impressive as his usual heroics.
Just last week, Bryan Reynolds made a mockery of the Cubs’ defense with the slowest triple in the Statcast Era:
It seems that a casualty of the overshift was having nobody to cover third base. This 49.4 mph jam job is the very definition of hitting ’em where they ain’t.
Just as the shortest home run could only happen in Boston, the longest out had to be a casualty of Detroit’s cavernous center field. In 2021, Kyle Seager blasted this ball 427 feet, but Derek Hill tracked it down:
No wonder Seager retired. Is it fair that this bomb was a fly out whereas Rizzo’s popup counts as a home run? Of course not, but this is baseball. No one ever said it was fair.
-Daniel R. Epstein
