Back when Albert Pujols still had a goose egg under the old dinger column, some of us wondered whether a National League pitcher might hit a homer before he did.
But while Pujols put that issue to bed with his first homer of the season on Sunday, it turns out that the pitchers weren't that far behind. Colorado Rockies pitcher Drew Pomeranz became the first hurler to homer this season with an absolute blast off San Diego's Edinson Volquez in the third inning of a 3-2 loss to the Padres.
Pomeranz's drive to left bounced off the facade of the second deck in the outfield stands and ESPN's Home Run Tracker listed the distance of the pitcher's first career homer at 394 feet. It was classified as a "plenty" home run, which falls between "no doubt" and "just enough" on HTO's scale.
Watch it here:
Yup, I'd say that definitely adds a new dimension to the term "pitcher's park."
Making it even more impressive is the fact that Pomeranz was suffering from being hit in the right leg with a Volquez line drive in the previous inning. Though the big boy lefthander would be forced to leave the game in the fourth — and was later tagged with the loss — Pomeranz stayed around long enough to take Volquez deep in an act of retribution.
"My jog around the bases was pretty slow," Pomeranz told reporters after the game. "I don't know if it was because of my leg or what. For that trot around the bases, I really didn't feel my leg too much then."
We're still trying to find out where this one ranks on a list of long home runs hit by a pitcher. While it may not be close to the longest in big league history, it has to be among the longest at Petco as only six other pitchers have homered there since it opened in 2004. Here's the list.
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