Franmil Reyes made up for a monster shot that went foul by hitting a tape-measure homer
There's a buzz that cannot be ignored at Padres Spring Training. A man with a thunderous bat has descended upon their facilities and is ready to cause some damage. No, we're not thinking of Manny Machado -- we're talking about Franmil Reyes.
Reyes was a sneaky good rookie for the Padres in 2018, belting 16 long balls in just 87 games, with an .838 OPS. He was even better after being recalled from Triple-A El Paso on Aug. 4, as he hit .318/.385/.548 down the stretch in the season's final two months. That hot streak included one of the longest homers ever hit at Wrigley Field.
Reyes' power was on display on Thursday against the Rangers. In his first at-bat, he hit a ball off Mike Minor so far that it cleared the left-field pavilion ...
... in foul territory. Rough.
Even in Spring Training, it has to be super frustrating when a titanic shot like that goes foul; Reyes eventually popped out to second base. The nice thing about baseball, though, is that it offers you the chance to make things right, and that's exactly what Reyes did. He led off the fourth with a line-drive single and scored on Francisco Mejia's homer. Then, against Jordan Romano in the fifth inning, Reyes absolutely unloaded:
There's no @statcast here, so we'll estimate the distance on @La_Mole_13 blast at 😱 #PadresST pic.twitter.com/wpApVT4lTd
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) March 7, 2019
Holy smokes, that one was hit a long way. You don't even need Statcast to say that this had to be one of the longest blasts ever seen at Peoria Stadium.
Guess that's what happens when Franmil gets all of one.
"I hit it pretty good!"@La_Mole_13 talks about his tape-measure shot and the difference for him between this year's #PadresST and last.@Padres pic.twitter.com/RE71q8TDq6
— FOX Sports San Diego (@FOXSportsSD) March 7, 2019
Andrew Mearns is a writer for Cut4 whose baseball obsession was born from the shattered dreams of Mike Mussina's perfect game attempt in 2001. He has a startling memory of World Series highlights that barely functions as a party trick.
