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Heat ’16! Swing into ’17 with fastest-pitch HRs
- Updated: December 31, 2016
There’s a reason high velocity is prized in pitchers. It’s not easy to square up heat that approaches or reaches triple digits.
When an at-bat ended with a pitch of 99 mph or harder this season, batters hit .205 with a .285 slugging percentage, according to Statcast™. By comparison, they hit .301 and slugged .514 on fastballs between 88 and 90 mph.
Yet velocity isn’t everything. Location and movement also matter, and Major League batters are talented enough to drive almost anything if they are prepared for it. That doesn’t only apply to star players, either.
This was a lesson that played out on a national stage, late in Game 7 of the World Series. With the Cubs leading the Indians, 6-4, in the bottom of the eighth inning, flamethrowing closer Aroldis Chapman pumped in a 98.2-mph fastball to Cleveland’s Rajai Davis. Statcast™ measured the pitch’s perceived velocity at 100.1 mph, taking into account Chapman’s release point. Davis is known much more for speed than power but still pulled the ball over the left-field wall for a game-tying homer.
• Davis ties Game 7 with 2-run blast
Davis wasn’t the only player to overcome such sizzling velocity in 2016. Here is a look at the 10 home runs Statcast™ tracked this season that came on pitches of 99 mph or harder.
1. June 18: Kurt Suzuki vs. Chapman (102.4 mph) Chapman allowed three homers in 2016. One was Davis’, and the others were hit back to back by Eduardo Escobar and Suzuki, two players who combined to go deep only 12 other times all season for the Twins.
In this specific advanced-metric era, which goes back to 2008, Suzuki is the only player to homer on a pitch of 101 mph or harder. A current free agent, the veteran catcher might not be the hitter one would expect for such a distinction. Yet Suzuki also was the only big leaguer to collect three hits on pitches of 100-plus mph, adding a pair of doubles.
2. July 27: Coco Crisp vs. Matt Bush (100.4 mph) Of the 15 homers Crisp hit this year, including the postseason, 11 were on pitches of less than 92 mph. Since at least 2008, he hadn’t gone deep on a pitch of 97 mph or harder. But Crisp turned on this high-octane gas from Bush, …
