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Mac Williamson’s 464 foot home run to right center field last night made such a startling sound that I stood up and paced the room for a moment to reorient myself. It put me in a daze. It aroused Bruce Bochy.
Find someone who looks at you the way Bruce Bochy looks at Mac Williamson after he hits a 464 foot home run. pic.twitter.com/3oEfwdqvlK
— LOLKNBR (@LOLKNBR) April 24, 2018
It set some records.
Mac Williamson's 464-foot HR in San Francisco tonight is the farthest by a right-handed hitter to the opposite side of the field (i.e. right of dead center) since #Statcast started tracking in 2015. #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/3VtYk7kGO7
— David Adler (@_dadler) April 24, 2018
Longest HRs by Giants at AT&T Park since Statcast began in 2015:
— Andrew Simon (@AndrewSimonMLB) April 24, 2018
464 ft - Mac Williamson, tonight
458 ft - Hunter Pence, 2016
450 ft - Pence, 2015
444 ft - Pence, 2017
437 ft - Pence, 2016
We should enjoy this flash of life and energy while we can, because already the wolves are out in the form of Buster Olney and history is not on the Giants’ side. As I scrounge for daily content, I’m constantly checking this site’s archives. Grant wrote this 10 years ago:
Short term: His growing pains will probably continue for a little bit, if not the rest of the year. It seems like he’s struggling with pitch recognition, though I’m not sure if that’s a) because he’s prone to guessing, b) he needs time to get used to the pitchers around the league, or c) he’ll always have Benardian difficulties with certain pitches. Put me down for b. – there’s only so much you can do when you see pitchers like Greg Maddux and Trevor Hoffman for the first time. You don’t see too many craftypantses like those two in AA. It will be a long period of adjustment while he learns the league.
Long term: Good gravy, do I love that swing. It generates power, but at the same time, it’s short and direct. I’m no scout, but now I get why the Giants were promoting him regardless of his A-ball results. He just crushes pitches in the strike zone.
I’ll give you three guesses to figure out who this is about. It’s about John Bowker.
Can you draw a straight line from John Bowker to Mac Williamson? No way. The Giants have had better luck developing talent since those days and Mac Williamson’s age and relative experience actually puts him ahead of the curve compared to Bowker. Sure, Williamson’s ceiling is lower since we’re already in his prime years, but we know that Bowker never reached the potential we had for him. Baseball players are judged mostly against what we had in mind rather than what actually happened, although in fairness to irrational fans, time has a way of evening that out. For the moment, let’s just enjoy what Mac is doing and not foist our needs onto him. As he said over the weekend, he’s definitely not a savior.