Ender Inciarte Robbing Yoenis Cespedes Of A Walk-Off Home Run Is WAY Worse When You Lay Out All The Stats
I’m pretty sure this catch murdered KFC last night, but reading off the stats behind it is like hammering a stake into his heart when he’s already dead. It’s just unnecessary. That’s why we’re gonna do it here this morning.
This season, balls that had equal to or greater exit velocity and launch angles have resulted in a hit 84% of the time, so with two outs, and a man on first and second, runners going on the pitch, if that’s a double in the gap, that would’ve at least tied the game, possibly even won it with a lucky bounce. Statcast also added that batted balls this season with an exit velocity and launch angle equal or greater to that Cespedes drive last night resulted in a home run 72% of the time. Kevin Clancy, you are the 28%.
And if there was any doubt over whether that would’ve been a home run or not had Inciarte not gotten there in time — that’s over the wall. This loss is obviously a huge, swift kick to the nuts if you’re a Mets fan, especially since you were just swept by the worst team in the National League, the Atlanta Braves, but honestly, and it sounds weird saying this, there’s no shame in getting swept by the Braves right now.
The Braves lead the majors in hitting in the month of September (.303), and they’re the third best hitting team in the majors since Matt Kemp got there on August 2 (.282). With the sweep, they also have the third most wins of any major league team in the month of September. I know it’s not going to push that Cespedes ball over the fence or anything, but maybe it’ll make you feel a little less terrible today, knowing that, at the very least, the Braves are playing good ball right now, so you technically got swept by the shittiest team in the league, but not really, kind of, sort of. I’m gonna go now.