00:00It was the kind of moment you might have missed if you turned the game off early,
00:04when the Twins hung a four-run fifth inning on Tarek Skubal Tuesday night,
00:08it would have been easy to look away, but if you stuck around, or even just checked the box score,
00:13you saw something that matters a whole lot more for the future of this organization,
00:17than the final score of one game in April, it came in the bottom of the ninth inning,
00:21and it came off the bat of rookie Kevin McGonagall. Now, McGonagall is just 21 years old,
00:26but he is already carrying the weight of being baseball's number two overall prospect,
00:30on Tuesday, with Javier Baez standing on second base, he stepped to the plate against Twins
00:34reliever Eric Ors, this was a rematch, McGonagall had faced Ors just one night earlier in the series
00:40opener, in that first meeting, he took a first pitch strike, and then chased a splitter that
00:45dove right out of the zone, grounding out weakly to first base, that sequence, was still fresh in
00:51his mind when he walked up with the Tigers trying to spark a late rally, knowing what was coming,
00:55and actually hitting it are two different things, after that previous at-bat,
00:59Ors knew he could get McGonagall to chase the splitter down in the dirt, McGonagall himself
01:03said it was still incredibly difficult to lay off, admitting, tried to get him up in the zone,
01:08it was kind of hard still, Ors started him with a fastball just above the zone, that McGonagall
01:13smartly took for a ball, but then the pitcher went right back to his best weapon, he pounded the bottom
01:18of the zone, McGonagall managed to foul off a low splitter, then took a fastball at the knees to fall
01:24behind in the count, one ball and two strikes, at that point, with the game on the line, McGonagall
01:29shifted into pure battle mode, he wasn't thinking about launch angle or exit velocity, he was thinking
01:35about survival, and keeping the line moving, he described his thought process simply, saying,
01:40I was just up there battling, trying to give it all I had to put the ball in play, get
01:44on base and keep
01:45passing the stick, Ors then tried to bury the splitter the exact same pitch that got McGonagall the night
01:51before, and McGonagall did chase, lunging down at his feet, desperately trying to get the barrel of
01:57the bat under the ball, in that situation, he knew the math was simple, he put it this way,
02:03definitely trying to put bat on ball, if it's foul, it's a win, if it's a hit, it's a win,
02:08if I ground
02:09it out, it's not great, what happened next looked more like a golfer hitting out of thick rough,
02:14than a baseball swing, but the result was pure line drive, McGonagall not only connected with a pitch
02:20that was a mere 6 inches off the ground, but he drove it down the right field line for an
02:24RBI
02:25double, just like that, the potential tying run was at the plate, according to StatCast, that was the
02:30lowest pitch struck for a base hit by a Tigers player since Harold Castro singled off a pitch
02:35measured at just, Westain and Akers Stingerstzel, 37 feet above the ground back on August 27, 2022,
02:44in fact it ranks as the 7th lowest pitch for a Tigers hit in the entire StatCast era, but here
02:49is the
02:49truly remarkable part of the data, it wasn't a soft bloop, it was a line drive with an exit velocity
02:55of
02:55100 miles per hour, out of the 32 base hits recorded in the major leagues since 2020 on pitches 6
03:02inches
03:02or lower, Kevin McGonagall's double was the hardest hit ball by exit velocity.
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