Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz is absolutely electric. He’s on pace for a historic season at the plate and added a leadoff home run during the Cincinnati Reds’ 5-2 win over the San Diego Padres on Monday. He also may have thrown a baseball harder than anyone has ever thrown a baseball in a Major League Baseball game.
As noted by Reds announcer John Sadak, Statcast clocked a ninth inning De La Cruz throw at 106.9 miles per hour. Here’s video of that throw, which was literally too hot to handle as first baseman Jeimer Candelario couldn’t even get his glove up in time to catch the ball. It was even noted on the broadcast that he might have been trying to see how hard he could throw the ball and that’s what caused the error.
Sure, the throw resulted in an error and kept the Padres’ hopes alive, but it was undeniably awesome. The previous record belonged to Colorado Rockies outfielder Brenton Doyle. Last fall he was clocked at 105.7 miles per hour on a throw home.
The stat has only been tracked since 2015, which means there is a little more than a century’s worth of data unaccounted for. On the other hand we’ve got about a decade of tracking the biggest and strongest athletes to ever play the game and no one has ever done that before, so it’s still pretty impressive.
To continue with the mythologizing of one of MLB’s youngest stars, De La Cruz’s April is officially in “Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle” territory as he’s the first player since 1901 to have at least eight home runs and 17 stolen bases in the month of April.
The numbers continue to tell the story of a player with limitless potential. And the eye test confirms that he’s fun as hell to watch no matter what he’s doing.
