Since Statcast was introduced around Major League Baseball in time for the 2015 season, interest in certain statistics has steadily grown over the years.
One of those is exit velocity, and on this date in 2025, Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz etched his name in record books by launching the hardest-hit home run in Statcast history. Logan Henderson of the Milwaukee Brewers sent a 92.2 mph fastball to Cruz at the plate, and he absolutely annihilated it.
The 122.9 mph exit velocity was jaw-dropping enough, but it also landed 432 feet away and in the Allegheny River. To make it even more impressive, this tater broke the exit velocity record that Cruz had already set previously.
Related: 2026 Oneil Cruz Home Run Tracker (Stats & Videos)
Looking Back on Oneil Cruz’s Missile
¡ONEIL CRUZ SACÓ LA BOLA DEL ESTADIO! 😳
Conectó un cuadrangular que salió del PNC Park a una velocidad de 122.9 MPH 💥
Es ahora el batazo con mayor velocidad de salida desde 2015 (cuando se empezó a medir), superando los 122.4 MPH… que también había conectado él.
Fue su HR… pic.twitter.com/uk5Z0QzmMc
— Erick José Lantigua (@EJLantigua) May 25, 2025
The first matchup between Henderson and Cruz took place in the bottom of the first, and the right-hander caught him looking for a strikeout. The center fielder made sure he didn’t give him another chance to do that in his second at-bat, jumping on the first pitch he saw to produce an awe-inspiring tank.
Cruz stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the third inning with the Pirates trailing Milwaukee by a score of 3-0. While there was nobody on base for this Cruz Missile, it certainly felt more significant than a simple solo home run during the middle of the regular season. His immediate reaction once he put the ball in flight was also perfect. I mean, how could you not know you got every bit of that baseball?!
Adam Frazier’s reaction was priceless, and his thoughts on the blast itself also made a lot of sense. “I’m just glad that ball got over the fence and didn’t hit somebody,” he said, via TribLive’s Kevin Gorman. “Because that could have been bad.”
As mentioned before, this tank broke the previous Statcast record for a hit with the highest exit velocity. That was also accomplished by Cruz when he lined a 122.4 mph single against the Atlanta Braves on August 24, 2022. Before the left-handed slugger launched this ball into the Allegheny, the record for hardest-hit home run was held by Giancarlo Stanton. He launched a tater that traveled 449 feet with a 121.7 mph exit velocity in 2018.
The Rest of Cruz’s 2025 Season
The context makes this moment both more impressive and more complicated.
After setting a career-high 21 homers in 2024 (which was also a Pirates record for shortstops), he followed it up with 20 more homers and a league-leading 38 steals while switching positions and becoming Pittsburgh’s starting center fielder. However, those numbers were also accompanied by a .200/.298/.378 triple slash and 174 strikeouts across 544 plate appearances.
His expected wOBA was .324 versus an actual .295, which suggests that despite having an elite quality-of-contact profile, his surface-level numbers underperformed compared to what his peripherals showed. It’s clear that Cruz doesn’t have a problem making hard contact — and we’ll talk about that more in a second. However, the bigger problem is simply putting balls in play with more regularity.
In the three seasons he’s seen at least 1,000 pitches at the big-league level (2022, 2024, and 2025), Cruz has finished in the bottom 10% of the league when it comes to strikeout rate. It’s gotten progressively worse in relation to the rest of baseball, according to Statcast:
- 2022: 34.9% strikeout rate (Bottom 1% of MLB)
- 2024: 30.2% strikeout rate (Bottom 8% of MLB)
- 2025: 32.0% strikeout rate (Bottom 2% of MLB)
Things aren’t going so well for Cruz in the strikeout department so far in 2026, either.
That’s the Cruz paradox in a single sentence: the man who hit the hardest ball ever tracked by Statcast batted .200 for the season. The record and the struggle coexist. Through his first 49 games played, the outfielder’s 80 strikeouts are the most in baseball.
Oneil Cruz Is Royalty When it Comes to Hard Contact
The thing that gets lost in the sauce while we’re gawking at his 122.9 mph homer is that Cruz is no stranger to hitting lasers like this. Although the strikeout rate area of his Statcast page is coated with different shades of blue, the areas covering average exit velocity and max exit velocity are deep red.
Cruz made landfall in the big leagues in 2021, and he wasted no time launching himself to the top of the exit velocity leaderboards. Here’s a look at his average exit velocity and max exit velocity each season, courtesy of Statcast:
| Year | Avg. EV | Max EV |
| 2021 | 100.5 | 118.2 |
| 2022 | 91.9 | 122.4 |
| 2023 | 89.5 | 115.8 |
| 2024 | 95.5 | 121.5 |
| 2025 | 95.8 | 122.9 |
His max exit velocity has fallen within the top 1% of MLB each season except for 2023 (he was limited to just nine games). His average exit velocity in 2024 and 2025 was also at the top of the league. And so far in 2026, it’s more of the same. Through 49 games, his 95.8 mph average exit velocity and 119.0 mph max exit velocity are both within the league’s top 1%.
Cruz’s natural ability to hit baseballs has never been in question. While he’s been tough to project and evaluate, it’s impossible to ignore his at-bats because he could do something like this at any moment.
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