Watch: Mike Trout hammers a home run so far it breaks Statcast
Here’s a not-so-hot take: Mike Trout is very good at baseball.
Ever since he stormed onto the stage and won the Rookie of the Year Award in 2012 (and finished second in the American League MVP voting), the Angels outfielder has widely been thought of as a once-in-a-generation talent, the type of player who legitimately doesn’t come around that often.
After finishing second in the MVP voting again in 2013, he actually won the award the following season. He would go on to win it again in 2016. In fact, he’s finished in the top five of the MVP voting in every season that he’s seen significant playing time.
So when Trout achieves something inhuman and seemingly supernatural, we really shouldn’t act surprised anymore.
Well, on Wednesday night, Trout once again did something that should be impossible. He broke Statcast, which (if you’re more of an old-school fan) is the tracking technology MLB uses to collect and analyze data.
Thanks to Statcast, we know more about things like launch angles, exit velocities, catch probabilities and other statistics that you never really felt you needed to know, but that are still cool to be aware of anyway.
That brings us back to Trout, who, in the bottom of the first inning of a game against the Orioles, absolutely crushed a pitch from Baltimore starter Dylan Bundy.
There was never any doubt regarding whether or not Trout’s blast had the distance to clear the wall. Rather, the only question was, how far would it travel?
Statcast originally gave Trout’s dinger, which landed deep in the left-field seats, a projected distance of 524 feet. Of course, while it may have been a long home run, it wasn’t quite that long, so it seemed as though Statcast might have made a mistake.
And according to the Orange County Register’s Jeff Fletcher, Trout did indeed “break” Statcast.
In a follow-up tweet, Fletcher estimated that Trout’s home run had a projected distance of about 450 feet.
It was the 11th home run of the year for Trout, who now shares the major-league lead with Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts. He’s also batting .292 with 26 walks and a ridiculous .433 OBP.
According to Angels manager Mike Scioscia, Trout’s home run, which left the bat traveling at 116.7 miles per hour, was one of the more impressive ones he’s ever seen. “It’s about as loud and far as I’ve seen a ball hit,” Scioscia told the Los Angeles Times.
Trout himself agreed, saying he couldn’t remember hitting a home run that hard before.
One thing is for certain: Nothing can stop Trout right now.
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