
Matt Holliday Is A Hulking Mass Of Forearm Meat
This is Matt Holliday’s two-run blast off of Kyle Lohse yesterday.
The pitch: A 2-2, 93-mph Lohsian flat-brimmed sinker that ended up sitting middle-in and knee-high (which is not exactly the spot you want a pitch to end up when you’re facing a guy who looks like a ginormous real-life version of those old M.U.S.C.L.E figurines from the 80s.)
The swing: The thing I’m most fascinated by here (aside from the ungodly Home Run Tracker details you’re about to see) is this …
That’s gorgeous. Firm front-side, great balance, beautiful extension, the right hand punching the inner-half of that ball, the head still and seeing it all and HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THE SIZE OF HIS GODDAMN ARMS.
Look at the size of all of him, actually. He’s like the pale Hulk.
“The Pale Hulk”. That’s got a nice ring to it, no? Better than “Big Daddy”?
The velocity off the bat: 111.9 mph
The elevation angle: 22.9º
True distance: 458 feet*
*I guessed 460+. I figured a ball hit that hard, that bounced (hard, mind you) off the jumbotron signage at this point …
… above a wall that is 400 feet from homeplate might have had a little more than a 458-foot jaunt in it’s flight plan, but I won’t argue with math.
Also, that baseball is dead.
The verdict: I love it when a hitter turns on one and hits to the pull field, but there is no swingpr0n that makes me more excited than seeing a guy stay back on a pitch, and crush the absolute shit out of it (420+) to dead center or the opposite field. This is indeed that. It’s freaky, rare, raw, stupid and goddamned incredible.