Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco's Oracle Park, Rays pinch-hitter Luke Raley had an incredibly improbable home run against the Giants. First off, the Statcast reading showed that a ball hit with this exit velocity and launch angle in tandem would usually be a home run in all 30 MLB ballparks. That part checks out. This one doesn't: The home run didn't leave the yard.
How about that, huh? It was an inside-the-park homer that usually would leave every single ballpark in the majors. And it nearly did off a carom. This ball was hit to the deepest spot in the park and had home-run distance, but it was just to the right of the line on the center-field wall of brick. It ended up also bouncing off the top of the wall while heading toward left field.
See for yourself:
☢️🚨 Inside the park Nuke 🚨☢️ pic.twitter.com/XRFc9gRheI
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) August 16, 2023
For Raley, that's his 17th homer and he's now driven home 43 runs on the season. This is yet another case where the box score doesn't tell the whole story. Not even a fraction of it.
What were the chances of that happening with the ball? One in a million? I'd say the chances are far more remote than that. We could stand a line of players in the outfield with baseballs and let them attempt a throw off the wall that would end up with such a result and it would probably never happen like that.
Score another point in the column of baseball for having unique outfield dimensions as opposed to cookie-cutter outfields that would've deprived us of such a highlight.
