Behold the slowest HR ever tracked. It's a sight to see
Adam Berry
@adamdberryST. PETERSBURG -- As the story goes, the Rays lowered the left-field-corner wall of Tropicana Field so that athletic outfielder Carl Crawford could pull off more highlight-reel home run robberies. The most famous home run in franchise history, Evan Longoria¡¯s walk-off blast in Game 162, sailed over that short part of the wall on the final day of the 2011 regular season.
On Tuesday night, a different sort of history was made in that corner of The Trop in the Rays' 5-4 win over the Yankees.
After Isaac Paredes hit a homer high and deep to left field off Yankees lefty Nestor Cortes, Rays designated hitter Harold Ram¨ªrez lofted a solo shot of his own a Statcast-projected 323 feet down the left-field line. Ram¨ªrez cracked his bat on the swing, and the ball barely cleared the wall -- for good reason.?With an exit velocity of 85.4 mph, Ram¨ªrez¡¯s homer had the lowest exit velocity of any over-the-wall dinger tracked by Statcast.
¡°Just hoping it was going to stay fair. I felt like off the bat, he got enough of it,¡± Rays manager Kevin Cash said. ¡°You might as well hit it right down the line to get it.¡±
According to Statcast, Ram¨ªrez¡¯s fly ball would have been a home run in only one of 30 parks: Tropicana Field. You can call that good luck. He called it good aim.
¡°The wall is low,¡± Ram¨ªrez said, ¡°so that helped me a lot.¡±
The ball came with an expected batting average of .030, lower than all but nine of the 45 batted balls tracked by Statcast in Tuesday¡¯s game. In fact, most balls hit with the same combination of exit velocity and launch angle (33 degrees) would land just shy of the warning track, according to Statcast. Off the bat, Ram¨ªrez thought it was ¡°100 percent¡± a harmless flyout to left field.
But it still cleared and it still counted, giving the Rays their second pair of back-to-back homers this season. Their first set of consecutive homers on June 10 at Target Field came with a quirk, too: The first was an inside-the-park homer by Randy Arozarena, followed by a Vidal Bruj¨¢n blast to left.
It was the shortest homer of Ram¨ªrez¡¯s career, 14 feet shy of a 337-foot blast he hit on May 24. It was the shortest long ball by a Ray since 2015, passing Brad Miller¡¯s 329-footer on May 9, 2017. And it was the second-shortest homer in the Majors this season, trailing a 321-foot homer Adam Frazier hit in Boston on May 22.
They all count just the same, though, short wall or not.
¡°As soon as I break that bat, I just [think it's a] fly ball to left field,¡± Ram¨ªrez said. ¡°So I just got excited it was a home run.¡±