You probably assumed that the hardest hit homer in the Statcast era (i.e., since we’ve been able to accurately track things like that) came off the inhuman bat of Giancarlo Stanton. And I’d tell you that, give it enough time, and you’ll be right. Eventually, you’ll be right.
But for now, the record belongs not to Stanton, but to Diamondbacks prospect Peter O’Brien, who just absolutely destroyed a baseball:
That’s 119.5 MPH off the bat. To put that in context, league average exit velocity is about 88 MPH. A really hard hit ball might top 100 MPH.
And O’Brien went over that mark by 20%.
I will now feel guilty when I say someone “crushed” the ball, only to find they popped it at a measly 110 MPH.