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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Andrew Joseph

Rangers manager wrongly blamed Gleyber Torres’ walk-off HR on the Yankees’ ‘Little League ballpark’

Gleyber Torres Yankees Rangers Little League Chris Woodward Giancarlo Stanton MLB

The New York Yankees took Game 1 of Sunday’s doubleheader with the Texas Rangers, 2-1, in dramatic fashion. And in the process, Rangers manager Chris Woodward managed to get himself crushed by Yankees fans.

It’s no secret across baseball that the right-field wall to Yankee Stadium is notoriously short. It’s been that way since the stadium opened, and left-handed betters absolutely feast on that short porch. It’s how Anthony Rizzo made history earlier this season with the least powerful three-homer game of the Statcast era. Everyone knows about it.

But in Gleyber Torres’ case, it was probably a bit unfair to dismiss his heroics as merely a gift from Yankee Stadium.

With the score tied in the bottom of the ninth, Torres took a 3-1 sinker the opposite way for a walk-off home run over that right-field wall. Now, I can understand the frustration about a ton of Yankee Stadium home runs. But Woodward probably should have at least looked at the measurements before calling Torres’ home run an “easy out in 99 percent of ballparks.”

Torres’ home run went 369 feet at 106.5 mph off the bat. It would have been a home run in 26 of the 30 MLB ballparks — not an out in 99 percent of ballparks. So, as much as Woodward didn’t want to blame John King for allowing the home run, his pitcher just has to execute better next time. It wasn’t the stadium’s fault. Both teams played there.

Just to be sure, though, Giancarlo Stanton hit a 461-foot home run in Game 2.

Yankees fans, of course, had plenty of “Little League park” jokes after those remarks.

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