Oneil Cruz is a player of extremes. The 6-foot-7 shortstop — the tallest man ever to play the position regularly — doesn’t just have incredible bat speed and power, he can lay claim to the hardest-hit ball of the Statcast era, and he once held the record for the hardest throw by an infielder as well. But for as loud as his contact is, the frequency with which he makes it has been an issue, as he’s particularly prone to chasing pitches outside the zone. Defensive metrics don’t love him either.
Yet he’s the kind of player you can’t take your eyes off, because when it all comes together, it’s a sight to behold — and gradually, it’s been coming together more frequently. Case in point: Last week found Cruz in a prolonged funk, hitting just .151/.224/.283 in his previous 58 plate appearances dating back to May 15 while striking out 23 times (39.6%) in that span. After going 0-for-4 in last Tuesday’s series opener against the Dodgers, he collected a pair of hits the next night, including this three-run homer off Evan Phillips:
That’s a 462-footer into the Allegheny River, the longest homer of Cruz’s major league career by 25 feet, and the third splash hit of his career; he also had ones on September 6, 2022 and May 3 of this season. The 117.7-mph exit velocity on his shot off Phillips made it his hardest-hit home run to date by 0.2 mph, surpassing an August 28, 2022 dinger in Milwaukee. For both distance and exit velocity, he’s up there with the big boys; the homer off Phillips is the majors’ seventh-longest this year behind three from Aaron Judge (a 473-footer from May 9 being the longest) and ones by Mike Trout, Bobby Witt Jr. and Shohei Ohtani. Cruz’s homer is the fourth-fastest in exit velocity behind two by Giancarlo Stanton (a 119.9-mph shot from May 8 being the fastest) and one by Ohtani.
He’s right there in flavor country when it comes to some of the new bat tracking metrics, second only to Stanton in average bat speed (78.0 mph) and fast-swing rate (74.6%); he’s below average in terms of his squared-up rate (23.1%) — that’s the rate at which he obtains at least 80% of the maximum exit velocity for that swing — but a respectable 15th in blast rate (16.2%), the rate at which he squares up balls on fast swings.
Cruz’s homer against the Dodgers was his eighth of the year, and his first since May 12. The next day against the Twins, he hit a towering 422-footer, 114.4 mph off the bat. Contrary to whoever called this one, it did not go into the Allegheny, instead bouncing around the upper deck of PNC Park:
As for those aforementioned extremes, on July 14, 2022, in just the 25th game of his major league career, Cruz recorded the fastest throw by an infielder to that point, a 97.8-mph bullet on a groundout. That record fell by the wayside at the hands of Elly De La Cruz last year, with Masyn Winn’s relay throw from May 6 of this year dialing the record up to 101.2 mph, though unlike Cruz and De La Cruz, he didn’t actually make an assist. As for the bat, on August 24, 2022, Cruz recorded what still stands as the hardest-hit ball of the Statcast era, a 122.4-mph single off the right field wall at PNC Park that surpassed a 122.2-mph single by Stanton from October 1, 2017.
On May 21 of this year against the Giants, Cruz collected the two hardest-hit balls of the season, first a 120.4-mph single in the first inning and then a 121.5-mph double in the ninth; in the third, he also smoked a 116.3-mph double, making him the first player ever to record three batted balls of at least 115 mph in one game, as well as the first with two of at least 120 mph:
That three-hit game happened amid the aforementioned slump; Cruz had collected one hit in his previous four games and would add just two hits over his next six. Through the feasts and famines, Cruz is now hitting .243/.298/.429 for a 102 wRC+, and .239/.301/.441 (105 wRC+) through 158 major league games overall, with 28 homers, 18 steals and 2.9 WAR in 655 PA; his 220 strikeouts would be three shy of Mark Reynolds‘ single-season record if he’d done them all in one year. The bulk of his time in the majors came in 2022 when he played 87 games and launched 17 homers with a 105 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR.
