SEATTLE — For seven innings, Shohei Ohtani and his latest superhuman act on a baseball field — a solo homer into the upper deck of right field — seemed to define a perfect Friday evening at T-Mobile Park.
While Ohtani’s homer may have traveled a ridiculous 463 feet, it was still only worth one run.
And Mitch Haniger, well, his 386-foot homer in the eighth inning was worth four Seattle runs and a win.
With the two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning, Haniger sent a laser into the Mariners’ bullpen off Jose Quintana for a grand slam, breaking a 3-3 tie and sending Seattle to a stunning to a come-from-behind 7-3 victory over the Los Angeles Angels.
The storybook start to Ohtani’s 2021 season added another chapter to the stunning highlight reel of towering blasts that seemingly defying typical baseball logic.
Ohtani crushed his 33rd homer of the season in the third inning off Mariners starter Marco Gonzales, sending a ball into the highest deck of right field.
He became just the sixth player in T-Mobile Park history to hit ball into the highest deck in the stadium. MLB Statcast measured the blast at 463 feet, making it the longest homer hit to right field in stadium history.
Per the Mariners records, there have been two balls hit farther.
Chris Carter, then with the Brewers, hit a 465-foot homer to dead center off Wade LeBlanc on August 19, 2016. The second-longest homer belongs to Jose Abreu of the White Sox, who hit a 464-foot bomb to left-center off Ariel Miranda on May 19, 2017.
After retiring Ohtani on a ground ball to second in their first matchup of the game, Gonzales got up quickly in the second at-bat, dropping in a curveball for a called first strike and then getting Ohtani to foul off a slider.
Gonzales tried to get him to chase a curveball in the dirt for a strikeout. But Ohtani remained disciplined. The plan for the 1-2 pitch was to throw an elevated fastball inside, just under Ohtani’s hands. The pitch would serve two purposes, either a swing and miss or weak contact. If not, Gonzales could then go back to a curveball away again.
Instead, the 89-mph fastball didn’t elevate enough, leaking to the inner half of the plate and sitting belt high.
Ohtani took a vicious cut at the mistake pitch, which players often label “a cookie.”
When the barrel of Ohtani’s black bat impacted the baseball, it sounded like an explosion. The immediate reaction from the crowd of 20,385 was a massive gasp of disbelief followed by an awed roar.
The ball came off the bat at a 31-degree launch angle and just kept climbing to right field. A pair of fans seated about six rows above the edge of the top deck in right field, looking directly into the sun, didn’t realize a projectile was headed their way.
The ball struck the seats about 40 feet to their left. They didn’t even move. The cameraman for the broadcast didn’t pick up the final landing spot because very few balls reach that spot in the stadium.
The homer had a 116.5 mph exit velocity, which is the hardest hit ball ever at T-Mobile Park in the Statcast era.
The blast gave the Angels a 3-0 lead.
And while it was impressive, it was the second longest homer that Ohtani has hit this season. On June 8, playing at Angel Stadium, he crushed a 470-foot blast to deep right-center off Royals lefty Kris Bubic.
To Gonzales’ credit, he shrugged off the homer and came back to strike out Jarred Walsh and retire Phil Gosselin on a fly out. He worked scoreless fourth and fifth innings, including a strikeout swinging of Ohtani.
Gonzales was vying for a quality start (six or more innings pitched, three runs or fewer allowed), but couldn’t quite finish the sixth inning. With two outs and a runner on base, he gave up a single to Jose Iglesias, who had three hits off him on the night.
Reliever J.T. Chargois got Taylor Ward to fly out to deep right to end the inning.
Seattle got two runs back in the fourth inning on a two-run double from Shed Long Jr. The Mariners tied the score in the seventh on an RBI single from Ty France.
