Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: more about that rare homer from Ronald Acuna Jr.

On Friday evening, Ronald Acuna hit the longest homer of his young career for the Atlanta Braves.  You may not realize just how special that was.

Top of the 8th inning, 2 outs.  This second game of the Arizona series was tied at 1-1 after the Atlanta Braves had lost a heartbreaker on Thursday night to saddle them with a 4-game losing streak.

Yoan Lopez was pitching.  He’s done well for the Diamondbacks this season, sporting a 1.08 ERA over 16.2 innings… with 13 punchouts against 7 walks and 8 hits.

He got the first 2 batters… Ender Inciarte hit one to short and Matt Joyce swung through a slider to whiff.

Then Ronald Acuna stepped into the box.  Lopez, a right-hander, didn’t seem like he wanted to throw to Acuna… or he and catcher Carson Kelly were trying to get him to ‘chase’.  They should know better.

Low outside corner and a bit beyond:  Ball 1.  Low outside corner just missed.  Ball 2.

Kelly wanted the next pitch low… Lopez didn’t get it low enough… it was essentially center cut in the middle of the zone:  a 97 mph fastball.

Ronnie didn’t miss it.  Like… not at all.  That part is not insignificant, by the way – he’s still missing some fastballs up in the zone.  But that’s not where this pitch was.

But Wait, There’s More

The StatCast numbers on this are impressive enough… 466 feet estimated distance (which I dispute, but we’ll get to that), 112.7 mph exit velocity (EV), and 21.0 degrees on the launch angle (LA).

If you want to be more impressed, though, you’ll have to dig into the numbers to see just how amazing that shot was.

In 2019, there have been 9 homers with a longer estimated distance to them (the longest so far being Nomar Mazara‘s 482 bomb for the Rangers).  Josh Bell is on that list twice – 474 and 472.

But I’m scanning the numbers and almost all of these are “moonshots” compared to Acuna’s.

Bell’s longest (2nd overall) had a LA of 21.8 degrees.  That’s close, but Acuna’s 21° is the lowest LA of anything in the Top 23 longest homers this year.

You’d have to go all of the way back to Hunter Pence in the 24th position to find a shallower angle (17.6°).  Pete Alonso is next – a homer we saw against Jonny Venters:  17.0° and 454 feet.

Nothing else in the Top 50 is within a full degree of Acuna’s bomb.

I went back to check the Top 50 for all of the 2018 season – homers ranging from 455 to 489 feet.  Just 2 of these were below 21° for a launch angle:

• Mike Trout (19.4, 459 feet)
• Giancarlo Stanton (20.2; 456 feet)

To get a ball high enough to clear a wall for a home run requires at least some elevation and a lot of power.  The lower the LA, the harder you have to hit it – all other things being equal.

Trout’s shot from last season may be the most impressive, then:  115.0 mph in Seattle.  Acuna’s did have the benefit of being at a stadium ranking as 2nd highest in altitude in the majors, but his wouldn’t have even counted without going at least 420 feet or so since there is a high yellow line that he has to reach.

No problem there… that ball caromed off the back wall at a point roughly 6-8 feet above the camera position cutout in the center field batter’s eye.

About that distance

That yellow line running across the Chase Field batter’s eye in center is 25 feet above the stadium floor.

At about 7 seconds into the video, the ball strikes that back wall.  Fox has shown a side-camera view that catches this well, but it’s nothing I can post here.

Using the top of the thick yellow line as 25 feet, I’ve estimated a 37.18 foot height on the ball as it hits the wall… call it 37.1 to be a little conservative.

You can see the 407 and 413 foot marks on that wall and the ball is close to being right between them… with a slight edge to the shorter number, so call it 409.

So that’s 409 feet out and 37.1 feet up.  You really think that would have hit the ground after traveling only another 57 feet?

I extrapolated the drawing above… now I can’t tell you how accurately depicted that is, but I can suggest that every one of their tweets is unique to the homer and angle.  Witness the huge difference for Acuna’s second-longest homer from earlier this year:

Heck, the April 11 homer peaked at nearly double the altitude of the laser from May 10.

The angle shown is a bit ‘monitor-dependent’, I’ll say, but if the trajectory curve that was posted is even close to accurate, Acuna’s homer extrapolates to 479.5 feet… and I was trying to err on the more conservative side.

Regardless:  I though you might appreciate knowing the numbers a bit more – this truly was a notable clout as it’s clearly very difficult to hit something that far without the benefit of a high angle of attack.

It’s definitely in a club that has a very select and narrow number of members.

Oh… and that homer won the game for Atlanta.