You don’t see this everyday, and that is saying something because the MLB season calls for teams to play pretty much everyday in their 162 game season.
Joc Pederson, the center fielder for the San Francisco Giants, must have “eaten his Wheaties” this morning. In a game between the Giant and the Chicago White Sox, Pederson did something that is pretty rare for the game of baseball.
Batting in the designated hitter position today, the left handed batter stepped up to the plate. Chicago White Sox’s first baseman Andrew Vaughn was positioned in the infield and was ready to field a pulled ball from Pederson, or so he thought…
Joc hit an absolute rocket of a line drive right towards Vaughn, coming off his bat at 109.1 miles per hour. For reference, the average exit velocity in the MLB is 90 MPH (according to Statcast), so Pederson bested that by a good 20 miles per hour
The White Sox first baseman was in the perfect spot defensively, but his glove “wasn’t ready for that smoke.” It originally looked like Vaughn might have misjudged the ball, or simply dropped it, but that was not the case upon review.
The announcer said over the replay:
“Oh my goodness, 109 off the bat, and went right through the webbing of the glove.”
The first baseman couldn’t believe what had happened after the play. You can see in the video that he began to move forward to make the throw after the ball made contact with his glove, but soon realized that the ball had busted through the webbing of his trusty mitt.
That doesn’t count as an error for the first baseman right? Surely not. If anything, the manufacturer of the glove should be credited with the error. Vaughn did everything he was supposed to in the play, except make sure that his mitt could withstand a flying baseball at almost 110 miles per hour.
The 30-year-old Joc Pederson has always been known to have some pop in his bat (and for wearing a pearl necklace during the Atlanta Braves World Series run in 2021). Many teams have signed him in for one or two year deals throughout his career, and now in his interviews he can say “I can hit the ball so hard, opposing players literally cannot catch it.”
I’m sure White Sox fans uttered the same word that Joc did in the video below when they saw the crazy play occur against their team (White Sox ended up winning the game anyways 7-3).
