Jac Caglianone joins the 120 Club

Somewhere in my list of article ideas I have a theoretical question tucked away. What is the longest distance you can hit with a baseball? Not what is the longest distance a really strong player can hit a ball, but what is the longest distance a baseball can be hit? I haven’t gotten around to it yet because I would have to interview a physicist or a materials scientist or both, but I’m excited about this question. Suppose you are an infinitely strong hitter with an infinitely fast swing. The distance you can hit the ball is not infinite. At some point you will hit the ball so hard that your bat will shatter, reducing the efficiency of energy transfer. Or maybe the ball is the weak link and you hit it so hard that it deforms into a less aerodynamic shape or explodes into a thousand pieces. There is a limit somewhere.

I will write this article someday (so please don’t steal it), and it will be fun to discover the answer through math and logic, but theory is not the only way to solve a problem. Last Thursday, Jac Caglianon tried to find the answer through pure experimentation, which is to say, in the top of the fifth inning against the Diamondbacks, the Royals right fielder made a Yilber Diaz fastball and ripped it into the right-center hole at 120 mph. The rocket made Caglianone just the eighth player to gain entry to the 120 MPH Club in Statcast’s 11-year history.

It’s the hardest hit of Caglianone’s career (at least officially; we’ll get to that later). It’s also the hardest-hit ball of spring training, and it’s far from the only fireworks he’s shown this past week. With a 116.5 mph double on Saturday and a 115.2 mph home run on Tuesday, Caglianone now owns three of the 10 hardest-hit balls of spring training. More importantly, it is the 30th hardest ball ever recorded by Statcast at any level. Fortunately, Statcast is now present in every spring training field, otherwise we would never have understood how special Caglianone has been this spring.

Caglianone isn’t exactly a surprising addition to the 120 MPH Club. In his descriptions of Caglianone as a potential candidate, Eric Longenhagen assigned a current/future score of 70/80 for power, variously describing it as elite, top tier, alien and crazy. He also noted, “His thighs almost burst out of his pants.” When asked in a chat what Caglianone looked like during the Arizona Fall League, Eric responded with just one word:

It’s also not surprising because Caglianone has done this before, just not officially. Last April, Kenny Van Doren of MLB.com wrote that Caglianone’s first Double-A at-bat was a single the other way at 125.9 mph, although the pitch was measured by the less accurate Trackman system.

So the news that Caglianone can hit a baseball very hard won’t exactly stop the press. Still, Thursday’s explosion pushed him to another level. It’s exciting stuff. The game was not televised, so the footage of the play came from a lower quality camera behind home plate, but look how quickly this ball hits the wall.

The lack of television cameras and special parabolic microphones aimed at home plate is also the reason the ball doesn’t sound like a shotgun blast. What you hear there is the radio feed. To get an idea of ​​how loud it is, let’s put it side by side Lucas Baker’s three-run homer, which came just two innings later. I haven’t done anything with the sound here. Baker’s 110-mph home run sounds like a blast compared to Caglianone’s explosion.

We must be sure to give some credit here to Yilber Díaz, whose name begs to be spoon-fed. His pitch topped out at 96.8 mph, and while pitch models aren’t everything, this might be a good place to note that his four-seamer was rated one of the worst in the majors last year according to Stuff+. You know how some people say that home runs aren’t hit, they’re thrown? This is what they are talking about.

In a way, this is almost a success for Díaz, whose command has been his biggest problem as a potential candidate. His Location+ was also at the bottom of the majors last year, but that’s a perfect tie. It is a four-seam fastball, mid (giant) thigh, directly above the center of the plate. It’s the platonic ideal of a meatball. This is what it looks like when a baseball begs to be put out of its misery. I’m surprised the little red dot isn’t holding a sign that says “YIKES!” like Wile E. Coyote.

Here we are in early March and we’re not supposed to read too much into one batted ball, or even the entire sample. Caglianone is 6-for-15 with five walks this spring. That’s a batting average of .400 and a walk rate of 25%. He also has a 15% strikeout rate, and his three extremely hard-hit extra-base hits pushed his wRC+ to 229. Let’s pour some cold water on that now, shall we? He is one of no fewer than 62 qualified players with a wRC+ above 200, alongside renowned top players such as Akil Baddoo And Brandon Lockridge. His 66.7% hard-hit rate is huge, but it’s not even top of his own team, considering Bobby Witt Jr. And Carter Jensen both above 70%. The one thing we’ve always known about Caglianone is that he has absurd power. The questions have always been about his contact rate, his ability to receive the ball and his defense in the field, and it will take more than a week to answer them.

Still, it’s hard to imagine Caglianone doing much more to prove himself in one week. He has now surpassed 115 mph three times a week and taken his fickle batting average to twice the Mendoza line. It could very well be nothing more than the sound of spring training, but we have to pay attention. And either way, a hit ball traveling 125 mph is worth stopping what you’re doing so you can take a moment to marvel. It only happens a few times a year.