Today we are moving forward in this series and get to the 6th longest home run hit by a Cincinnati Reds player in the 2024 season. If Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux have taught us anything it’s that everyone loves the long ball. Ok, perhaps that wasn’t exactly the takeaway from those two guys, but long home runs have been something people have talked about for over a hundred years. Only in the last decade or so, though, have we truly been able to measure their distance with *some* accuracy. Thanks to ball tracking in the big leagues we can compare 1-to-1 how far a baseball went. Every Monday for the next few months we’re going to be counting down the 10 longest home runs hit by the Cincinnati Reds in the 2024 season.
Rece Hinds is making his first appearance on the list this week, but it will not be his final appearance. This week’s home run for Hinds came in against Colorado, just like last week’s home run on the list from Elly De La Cruz. It’s the third home run hit against the Rockies on the list that has only covered five home runs so far.
The Video
The Metrics Behind The Blast
Tyler Kinley had just entered the game to begin the bottom of the 8th inning for Colorado. Rece Hinds was set to lead off the inning and lead it off he did. Trailing in the count 1-2, Hinds got a 91 MPH slider that didn’t do much sliding and he unloaded on it. The ball left his bat at 109.6 MPH and headed towards the Ohio River, landing 449 feet away in the upper deck bleachers in left-center field.
Distance Metrics
Distance: 449 Feet
Reds Ranks: 6th
Major League Baseball Rank: 90th (tie)
Rece Hinds Rank: 3
Other Metrics
Launch Angle: 25°
Exit Velocity: 109.4 MPH
Reds Exit Velocity Rank (home runs only): 17th (out of 174)
MLB Exit Velocity Rank (home runs only): 543rd (out of 5445)
The Story Behind The Blast
Rece Hinds was making his big league debut. He had grounded out and doubled earlier in the game while facing off against starter Ryan Feltner. Tyler Kinley came out of the bullpen to face Hinds in the 8th. Despite having a horrible year where he posted an ERA of 6.19, Kinley wound up with a 6-1 record in 2024. He had faced the Reds twice earlier in the season and had given up two runs in 2.0 innings.
Hinds had swung and made contact on the first pitch he saw in each of his previous two at-bats. This time around he fouled off the first three before taking a ball from Kinley. The last two pitches of that sequence were both sliders. Third time wasn’t a charm for Kinley here, but it was for Hinds who was ready for it and destroyed it when it caught too much of the zone.
For Rece Hinds it was his first big league home run and helped kick off an incredible debut week where he hit .423/.464/1.192 with three doubles, a triple, and five home runs in seven games leading directly into the All-Star break. That performance earned him player of the week honors.
The home run to lead off the inning extended Cincinnati’s lead in the game to 3-0. The Reds added three more runs before the inning was over and hung on to win 6-0 behind 7.0 shutout innings from Andrew Abbott as the club improved to 43-48 on the season.
You can follow along the entire series here
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