118.9
If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information.
Eric Sogard has been a wonderful story for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2019. He’s an “everyman” underdog in that he’s an utility infielder quad-A tweener who is also white and wears glasses. His “scrappy dude fans love” quotient off the charts.
He is also the reason Ted Berg wrote the sample size song. Benefiting from some good fortune so far in 2019, Sogard’s “quality of contact” stats lag far behind his actual on-field production. Which is fine! Humpback liners fall in, grounders find holes and home runs sometimes scrape the happy side of the wall. Variance is the spice of life, and the gods of variance are happily smiling on Eric Sogard’s begoggled face in 2019.
But some things are outcomes beyond the realm of variance. Some things, small subprocesses that drive the big picture nature of team sport, are measurements of skill and ability. Variables such as fielder positioning and the way the wind blows on a given day do not influence these skill-based and data-driven observations. The ability to hit the ball really, really hard is one of those things.
There is no applicable sample size adjustment for measuring the speed at which a baseball leaves a bat. It either screams off your bat at 119 miles per hour or it does not. When the batter is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., it does. When the batter is every other hitter in baseball this season, it does not.
The infinite monkey theorem does not apply here. Me, you or the semi-professional baseball player of your choosing could stand in the box with a perfect pitching machine and a bottomless bucket of balls and none of us are ever replicating a batted ball event like this. It’s special and rare and a hint at what’s to come.
For the first two weeks of his big league career, we clung to non-measurable results. The nature of his at bats pleased the learned eye while his mastery of the strike zone was clear to most people watching on TV.
But hits are what we notice. A ball struck at 111 mph looks nice to those pouring over Statcast numbers but when a routine 6-4-3 double play is the result, it’s tough to get excited. One day later, the ball was hit that much hard — 118.9 mph to be exact, but result was better: a ball hit past/through White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson.
When you hit the ball that hard, it becomes very difficult to field. When you hit the ball that hard but with a bit of air underneath it, the fans in the left field seats become difficult to keep safe.
Later in the game, it was Vlad’s turn to accept a boost via some good bounces and a well-placed poke. Then on Sunday, a ball struck at a more pedestrian (but still effective) level soared into the power alley in right for an extra base hit.
Hard-hit balls alone do not a star make. But all the pieces are beginning to fit together for Guerrero, as we expected they would. The velocity of his batted balls was never in doubt. It’s the frequency and trajectory that have been the issue over his first 60 big league plate appearances.
Those issues are not-so-slowly working themselves out, and before us blossoms a fearsome big league hitter. One with a skill-set unlike most at the top of the exit velocity leaderboards. Some of the names atop that list make it easy to dream on what’s to come. It’s company he’s likely to keep for a long time to come, atop that leaderboard and others like it.