Jesse Winker was the lone Cincinnati Reds position player to play in the Arizona Fall League on Tuesday afternoon. He would go 1-4 but he made that one he did have really count as he hammed a 3-run homer to give Surprise the lead. The lead wouldn’t hold up as they would go on to lose the game, but the home run may still be going. It was apparently an absolute bomb. The official Arizona Fall League twitter account said this about the home run:
CF Jesse Winker (@Reds / @BlueWahoosBBall) gives Surprise a 5-4 lead over Mesa with a 3-R HR OVER the berm in right field in the 3rd. #AFL14
— Arizona Fall League (@MLBazFallLeague) October 21, 2014
So, off to google I went. Surprise Stadium, google maps, measure tool. If the home run was a dead pull shot that went directly down the line and landed one foot beyond the berm, it would have gone an estimated by google maps 434 feet.
Whoever was working the gameday app though didn’t mark it as a dead pull homer, so I decided to try and line up gameday with google maps and overlaid the two and took the AFL tweet to be correct that the ball went over the berm. If the angle of the HR was correct in gameday and the tweet was correct that it went over the berm, the ball would have gone at least 448 feet according to google maps measure tool.
Later in the game both Ryan Dennick and Ben Klimesh would throw an inning of relief. Dennick would toss a perfect inning with a strikeout. He needed just 13 pitches as he worked in the offspeed stuff often. The left hander kept his ERA at 0.00 in 5.1 innings without a walk and with four strikeouts. Ben Klimesh was off to a good start as he struck out the first two batters of his inning but then gave up a solo home run before striking out the final batter of the inning. Klimesh averaged 94 MPH on his fastball on the day and now has eight strikeouts and just one walk in 6.0 innings in Arizona.
Felix Perez had a big night in Venezuela as he had three hits in four at-bats. Two of those hits were doubles, he drove in a run and scored another one. He’s hitting .293/.302/.537 through 41 at-bats on the season.
Sebastian Elizalde hit his fourth home run in his ninth game of the Mexican Winter League season. His four home runs are leading the league. Marquez Smith got off to a slow start in Mexico but has gotten things going over the last few days and kept things going last night as he went 1-2 with 2 walks and a solo homer.