The Curious Case of the Missing Home Run

Last night, Giants OF Heliot Ramos smashed a ball with an exit velocity of 107.9 mph and a launch angle of 33°. If you aren't well-versed in Statcast metrics, those numbers may not mean anything to you. But you know this kind of hit when you see it. Here's a video of William Contreras hitting a ball at the same launch angle and slightly lower exit velocity earlier this season.

That's a no-doubter. The announcer's voice rises, the crowd erupts immediately...everyone knows that's gone as soon as it comes off the bat.

Which is why it's...strange...that Heliot Ramos hit a ball harder than that one and it was caught harmlessly at the warning track. Rays CF Cedric Mullins runs all the way back, gears himself up to scale the wall, and then suddenly runs up several feet to make the catch.

The Giants challenged the call here – arguing that due to principles that Sir Isaac Newton taught us several years ago, the ball must have been impeded in some way. MLB does not allow Statcast data to be used in the process of reviews and somehow there was no footage of the ball going through the air, so the call was upheld.

The Giants then had two guys get ejected for simply trying to educate the umpires about physics.

I don't know for certain that the ball hit the catwalk last night. It's possible that the stadium crew turned on the A/C at full blast and directed all the vents into the air above center field at the moment the ball left the bat. It's possible that every person in the stadium exhaled at the same time, forming a vortex of human breath that Ramos's ball entered.

Here's what I do know. If we plot exit velocity and launch angle, this ball is smack dab in the middle of the home run zone.

There have been 62 balls hit into play at an exit velocity of at least 107 mph and a launch angle of between 31 and 35 degrees. 56 of those 62 were home runs. Here's what happened to the other six.

Robbed
Ronald Acuña Jr. (ATL vs. PHI) - 107.6mph x 33°. Robbed by Brandon Marsh on the first pitch of the game.

Oneil Cruz (PIT vs. TEX) - 110.6mph x 34°. Robbed by Evan Carter.

Wind
Ian Happ (CHC vs. WSH) - 108.5 mph x 32°. 22 mph winds in Chicago this day, enough to blow James Wood's hat off before he catches it.

Alec Burleson (STL vs. BOS) - 107.1 mph x 33°. Wind 11 mph in from right field. Caught at the wall. I expect the wind picked up at this time but this is the only other one without a rock solid explanation for the lack of a home run.

Stadium
Corbin Carroll (AZ vs CWS). 107 mph x 33°. Nails the center field wall at Chase Field. Home run in 29 of 30 parks.

The sixth non-home-run in this category is Ramos's last night.

This would hardly be the first time issues have been brought up about Tropicana Field. For one, it's named after juice. Additionally, the catwalk has repeatedly come into play over the years. An NBC Sports article from 2011 titled "The Tropicana Field catwalk strikes again" includes the following:

"Tropicana Field is really not fit for the playing of professional baseball games."

The official ground rules for Tropicana Field has five sections on "Catwalks, Lights, and Suspended Objects".

There is a 3-minute YouTube compilation of Tropicana Field catwalk home runs.

I will not stand idly by and let a former Richmond Flying Squirrel be wronged in this way. This should have been called a home run last night. Heliot was robbed by Tropicana Field. This injustice will not stand.

-Mike