It was the last moment of the Cubs game that I saw last night before entering my pre-Blogathon slumber. Not because it put me to sleep, but because – entirely coincidentally – I’d decided I need to go to sleep only seconds before Jason Heyward lumbered up.
So, although I didn’t get to see the actual end of the 11-inning game, I was pretty sure I’d just seen the effective ending (via @Cubs):
Deuces. ✌ï¸âœŒï¸ pic.twitter.com/h0qhdCd9RL
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) July 30, 2017
Heyward has been something of a master of hard contact that looks like it’s gonna go, and then winds up just a couple feet short this year. That one, though? I knew it was gone off the bat. It just looked so pure.
Sure enough, it was 105 mph off the bat, and 405 feet out to right center, with plenty of distance. According to ESPN’s Home Run Tracker, it would have left 27 ballparks.
The homer was Heyward’s 8th of the year, which obviously is not a monstrous total, but it’s a significant one: that’s one more than he hit all of last season. On the year, he’s hitting .254/.312/.403, which is still not where you’d want him to be (86 wRC+), but it’s a dramatic improvement on 2016 (72).