Announcement of Bad News Terrorized by haters’ remarks, Jung-hoo Lee delivered a statement
Outfielder Jung-hoo Lee’s first home run in a Giants uniform during a spring training game on Thursday came with an ironic caveat: If it happened in Oracle Park, the ball wouldn’t have gone over the fence.
The dinger happened in the top of the third against the Diamondbacks. Lee smoked a fastball thrown over the middle of the plate to right center field to give the Giants their only run in a 2-1 loss in the spring training exhibition at Salt River Fields. Reporters at the game noted that the Korean international began his trot with a hard sprint before slowing down a tad when he realized what happened to the ball.
On the website for Statcast, MLB’s on-field tracking technology, fans can see that the home run left Lee’s bat at 109.7 mph, launched at an 18-degree angle and traveled 418 feet. They can also see that if Lee had hit the ball the exact same way in every ballpark throughout the league, it would have been a home run in 29 of them. The one exception? Oracle Park in San Francisco.
Had Lee blasted the meatball he was pitched at Oracle, it likely would have landed in the corner known as Triples Alley, or at least close to it, which is listed at 415 feet from the plate as of 2020. While an extra-base hit would not have been the worst outcome in the world — provided no spectacular defensive play occurred — it certainly wouldn’t have been as celebrated as the home run was, which would have happened everywhere else.
There’s no reason to sound the alarm here. Lee will have time to get used to Oracle and will approach his regular season plate appearances with his new home park’s dimensions in mind. Besides, if Park’s spring training homer hustle is any indication, a hit to Triples Alley is likely to yield its namesake’s outcome. Giants fans will just have to try not to think about how it’d yield a guaranteed run (or multiple, if runners were on base) in 29 other parks.
