One can imagine that attempting to hit against major league pitching is one of the most difficult feats in professional sports.
But nothing does that sentiment justice quite like home plate camera angles of at-bats.
There were two such camera angle shots during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2-1 win over the New York Yankees on Friday night at Yankee Stadium—and they were frightening.
The first saw Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who tossed seven innings of shutout ball against the Yankees, fire a 97 MPH sinker that shattered New York slugger Giancarlo Stanton’s bat as he grounded out to Mookie Betts at shortstop in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Yamamoto DESTROYED Stanton’s bat 😯
(via @YESNetwork)pic.twitter.com/j0jcAxDLi9
Then, two frames later in the bottom of the sixth inning, Yamamoto, facing Yankees star Aaron Judge, fired a 97 MPH heater for a called strike, an offering that was caught on a home plate camera angle in a video posted onto X, formerly Twitter, by Rob Friedman.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 97mph Fastball (home plate view) pic.twitter.com/ZdsG2HHDUG
The scariest part about these angles is that they still don’t do true justice as to how fast the pitches are coming out of Yamamoto’s hand.
And Yamamoto certainly was lighting up the radar gun on Friday night, as his four-seam fastball boasted an average speed of 97 MPH, up 1.5 MPH from his season average of 95.5, en route to the seven-strikeout performance against one of the best lineups in MLB.
The Dodgers (40-25) and Yankees (45-20) will lock horns again on Saturday at 7:35 p.m. ET, with Gavin Stone (6-2, 2.90 ERA) on the mound for Los Angeles and Nestor Cortes (3-4, 3.46 ERA) opposing him for New York.
TIM CAPURSO
