If you didn’t see it last night, I figured it was one of those oddities you would not want to miss today.
Last night, while playing for the Iowa Cubs, Nick Madrigal hit a home run. That, alone, would be a notable thing, as he’d hit just six total as a professional, at all levels, before last night. But what made this one stand out is that he took it out of the park to the opposite field. With all appropriate respect to his considerable baseball ability, and with full acknowledgement that I am, myself, on the Fun Sized side of things, I did not know he was physically capable of doing it.
The video there doesn’t show the full path of the home run, but Statcast gives us an idea of its improbability: it came off the bat at 88.8 mph at a launch angle of 38 degrees, numbers that combine to tell the story of a somewhat routine fly out. But somehow this one went 325 feet, just enough to sneak out of the park. How? Well, apparently it was EXTRAORDINARILY windy out to right in Des Moines, so Madrigal’s very high fly ball got a nice little bit of carry.
The game was ultimately suspended in the 4th inning due to the weather. So there will be more at bats for Madrigal to pull of the obscenely improbable feat of a multi-homer game, but he may not get the wind boost this time around.
So far, back at Iowa, Madrigal has done nothing but hit. Frankly, that’s what you would expect him to do, because I suspect his bat really is too good for Triple-A pitching. Whether the quality of his contact going forward will translate enough in MLB to resettle him into a productive career remains to be seen. But I’d expect him to hit line drives all over the place at Iowa, never strike out, and take a small number of walks.