Photo: Kari Rivers
The Cincinnati Reds have only played a handful of games so far this spring and no one has played close to a full game. With that in mind, one of the things that has stood out so far has been that Matt McLain has been hitting the ball very hard so far. I know that you might be thinking to yourself that he only has one hit or that two guys on the Reds have already had two-homer games and you are right about those things.
So why is it that what Matt McLain has done worth writing about? Well, he missed all of last year with a shoulder and rib injury. After undergoing shoulder surgery in the spring, he missed 4-5 months, and then while rehabbing his way back from that he injured his ribs and couldn’t return during the regular season. Seeing him hitting the ball hard – even in a very limited sample size – is noteworthy. Some of us still dream of an alternate timeline where Austin Kearns never gets sat on by Ray King and ruins his shoulder (At that point he had played 152 career games and was hitting .313/.410/.530 for his career. After that day he hit 253/.351/.413 for the rest of his career in 1125 games).
Shoulders are really bad news for pitchers. But even for hitters they are bad news, though just not quite as bad – usually. Matt McLain has only had three batted balls this spring. They had exit velocities of 103.5 MPH, 104.7 MPH, and 112.3 MPH. Last year saw McLain return after the regular season to play a little bit in the Arizona Fall League. His top exit velocity in Arizona was 106.8 MPH. Back in 2023 as a rookie his top exit velocity was 109.9 MPH.
During his career between MLB (including spring training), Triple-A, and the Arizona Fall League, Matt McLain has 387 batted balls worth of data that we can look back at. It’s not a large sample size, but it’s not small, either. This spring he’s already had the hardest hit ball he’s ever had and by a very wide margin – his 112.3 MPH exit velocity yesterday topped his two previous high marks of 109.9 and 109.7 MPH. His 104.7 MPH mark from the weekend was the 35th hardest hit ball he’s had, too.
If you were worried about the shoulder injury for Matt McLain, that’s understandable. But those concerns should probably be alleviated by what we have seen over the last few days from the Reds infielder. He’s shown that he is not only still capable of hitting the ball hard, but that he’s actually hitting the ball very hard and maybe harder than he ever has before.
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