Giancarlo Stanton is big and buff and gets paid a lot of bucks to destroy baseballs. His power is legendary, but for the fact there’s no legend to it. According to MLB.com’s record book of Statcast exit velocity measures, Stanton is responsible for half of the top 20 hardest hit balls in 2015 and 2016. Baseballsavant.com has him as the owner of the hardest hit ball ever. No other player in the top 20 appears more than once.

And on Wednesday night, Stanton broke into the top 10 for 2017 with this laser beam:

It was Stanton’s second home run of the night, traveling at a scorching 115.6 miles per hour. But what made it so absurd was the ball’s other bona fides:

  • Giancarlo Stanton hit this ball at an 18.8 degree launch angle.
  • The ball didn’t even go 50 feet high.

Think about how hard a ball has to be hit to go 400 feet while registering a lower apex height than the Marlins Park sculpture. 115.6 mph hard is a good answer.

And on top of that, Stanton’s first home run of the night was a completely opposite set of numbers:

That one was hit at double the launch angle (in degrees) and reached an apex height twice that of the Marlins Park sculpture.

Giancarlo is a snapshot of Statcast. His homers cut grass and scrape clouds only two innings apart. He’s an exit velocity deity. One night of Giancarlo is an advanced stats/VU/Fx validation parade.

Baseball needs more Giancarlo Stanton.

 

All stats courtesy of MLB.com and baseballsavant.com, and are up to date as of April 12th, 2017.

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