You might remember outfielder (then-catcher) Peter O’Brien as the prospect the Diamondbacks received in July 2014 from the Yankees in exchange for Martin Prado. If not, the book on him is straightforward: he’s not a good fielder or baserunner, and his swing is too long for him to hit for average, but man oh man, the dude can straight knock the ectoplasm out of the baseball whenever he makes contact.
Fortunately for us, O’Brien did just that on Tuesday night against Mike Broadway of the Giants:
As it turns out, O’Brien’s home run was impressive for other, non-aesthetic reasons: it was the hardest-hit home run in Statcast’s two-year history, according to MLB.com’s Mike Petriello:
O'Brien's blast off a 94.9-mph Mike Broadway meatball left his bat at 119.5 mph and was projected to go 461.6 feet, had the left-field concourse not gotten in the way. If hitting a ball more than 119 mph -- or 14 mph harder than Aroldis Chapman has ever thrown one -- sounds impressive, that's because it is. It's in the top 0.00002 percent of the more than 92,000 tracked balls in play from last year, which is to say that he hit the ball really, really hard.
O’Brien isn’t expected to make the Diamondbacks' Opening Day roster, and could find it difficult to crack an Arizona outfield that has more players than spots -- there’s A.J. Pollock, David Peralta, and Yasmany Tomas, yes, but also well-regarded prospect Socrates Brito. Still, as long as O’Brien possesses the kind of wallop in his broomstick that he showed on Tuesday, you can rest assured that he'll get a big-league look somewhere, sometime soon.
