We can’t go back in time and put the various Statcast measuring devices into old baseball games. We don’t know for sure just how hard guys like Walter Johnson or Bob Feller were throwing. Home runs hit by Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson, or even Mark McGwire – we don’t know how far they really went. We don’t know how hard they were hitting the ball either. Some of that stuff is fun to just have the lore and legend. But today….. today we have that kind of information for baseball players. And it can be all kinds of fun. On Tuesday night, Elly De La Cruz was having all kinds of fun and we get to share it.
For the short story of it: Elly De La Cruz went 3-4 with a double, two home runs, two walks, and drove in four runs. His second walk of the day was a walk-off walk as he took a 4-pitch walk with the bases loaded in a tie game in the bottom of the 9th. Just that part of the story is plenty of fun.
However that probably won’t be much of what people are talking about today. That’s because buried in those three hits is something that we have never seen before – at least with confirmation.
This season is the first in which there is public tracking of baseball data in all of Triple-A. Last season it was in the Pacific Coast League and in one ballpark in the International League. And it’s been in the Florida State League for the past two years, too – with the lone exception being in Daytona. It’s been in the big leagues since 2015.
The three hits that Elly De La Cruz had on Tuesday night had exit velocities of 118.8 MPH, 117.1 MPH, and 116.6 MPH. His double was the one that came in at 118.8 MPH. That’s the hardest hit ball this season from anyone in the leagues that track this stuff publicly, and that includes the big leagues. His two home runs – and they came from different sides of the plate – were also rockets.
Three batted balls at 116 MPH or higher. No one has ever done that in a single game since we began to track that stuff. Giancarlo Stanton (twice) and Aaron Judge (six times) are the only two players to even do it twice in a single game. No team has ever had three in a single game. JJ Cooper of Baseball America noted that there are 10 teams who have don’t have two 117 MPH batted balls since 2015. There are six teams who don’t even have one. Elly De La Cruz had two of them on Tuesday.
Did anyone mention that Elly De La Cruz is the third youngest player currently in the International League among position players? Well they have now.
The 21-year-old began the season by going 1-21. He had 11 strikeouts and just one walk in that span. Since then he’s turned things around and done so in a big way. Over the following 57 plate appearances he’s hit .377/.421/.811 with 11 extra-base hits, four walks, and 14 strikeouts (24.5% strikeout rate). His season OPS is now up to .929 through 16 games despite that 1-21 start.