Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Jeimer Candelario

Jeimer Candelario isn’t necessarily known for his power production, but he has plenty of pop in his bat. He put that raw power on display late in 2019, blasting this Reynaldo López pitch an estimated 448 feet for a home run. The home run doesn’t seem all that impressive on TV, mostly because the camera can’t seem to locate the ball. But, given that Candelario hit it at 114.2 MPH, it’s fair to wonder if the ball simply vaporized.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Miguel Cabrera

Statcast began tracking exit velocity in 2015, and it’s safe to assume the hardest hit of Miguel Cabrera’s career came in the decade before that. Miggy wrapped up his fourth batting title in 2015, and in the process hit a ball 115.6 MPH against Jered Weaver and the Angels, but there’s no footage of it. The hardest Cabrera hit with accompanying video is this 2-run single, which was 114.4 MPH, but we thought the 113.8 MPH, 459-foot home run you see above would be slightly more entertaining to watch.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Jonathan Schoop

Here’s another case where the video perhaps isn’t quite as impressive as the Statcast numbers. Jonathan Schoop has tremendous raw power, but his aggressive approach also results in an awful lot of weak contact, so he doesn’t often get mentioned as one of the league’s big boppers. But the missile you see above is the hardest hit in Detroit Tigers history (since 2015 at least) and it left Schoop’s bat at a stunning 117.1 MPH. Just 46 players have hit a ball that hard in the Statcast era.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Riley Greene

So Riley Greene is pretty good. He’s been our number one prospect in the Detroit Tigers system for the past two years, and it’s because of things like this. Greene has just 23 balls in play tracked by Statcast, which makes sense, because he hasn’t played any official MLB games yet. But the rocket above is the second hardest-hit ball in Detroit Tigers history, at 115.8 MPH. At the time it was the hardest, and there’s a good chance he tops it this year.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Spencer Torkelson

Spencer Torkelson also has just 23 balls in play tracked by Statcast, but he has yet to truly scorch a ball, topping out with this 105.1 MPH single.  There aren’t many videos of Torkelson hits at the MLB film room, so we went with the hard single you see above, which left his bat at 98.5 MPH. We suspect it won’t take him too long to top 110 MPH at the big-league level, but if you’re aching for some Tork Bombs, feel free to watch all 30 of his blasts from last year.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Tucker Barnhart/Eric Haase

Tucker Barnhart is going to be Detroit’s starting catcher, and he’s a great defender who is capable of making some hard contact. In fact, the hardest hit ball of his career came this spring, but it was a groundout to shortstop. This piece is about hard knocks, and we know what you want to see. So enjoy the Eric Haase crush job above, a 113.2 MPH launch against his former team that went an estimated 442 feet and probably put a decent dent into the outfield bleachers.