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Oneil Cruz 122.9 mph home run

Hardest ball in the Statcast era: 122.9 mph, Oneil Cruz, 25 May 2025. MLB, Guinness and the Associated Press all print that exit velocity.

Also known as Cruz 122.9
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Ball speed

Published as 122.9 mphPublished as 122.9 mphPublished as 122.9 mph

Hardest-hit ball in the Statcast era, exit velocity tracked since 2015. Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates vs Milwaukee Brewers, 25 May 2025, home run. Not a pitch speed.

OfficialMLB.com (opens source in a new tab)

In context

  • 1.9× a cheetah's timed top speedSourced · Cheetah, 29 m/s. Sharp 1997, mean of three timed runs over 201.2 m
  • A football field in 1.7 sConstant · American football field, 100 yd (91.44 m)
  • London to New York in 28 h 10 minConstant · London to New York, 5,570 km great-circle

Worked out from the sourced figure above, which stays the ranked number.

Mechanism

Why it's so fast

Oneil Cruz 122.9 mph home run's exit velocity is how fast the ball left the bat on that swing. It is bat speed and a square contact. It is not the pitch speed on the way in.

  1. Contact

    The barrel has to be moving quickly and on the plane of the ball. A few millimetres decide a hard line drive from a popup.

  2. The tracked hit

    The figure is the tracked speed off the bat for the swing the sources name. A different system or a different day is not averaged in.

Nearby on this list: Oneil Cruz 122.4 mph single.

Provenance

Every measurement

Claimed, measured and official figures side by side, each with its source. The ranked figure is marked.

  1. 198km/h122.9mph54.9m/s107knRanked figure

    Hardest-hit ball in the Statcast era, exit velocity tracked since 2015. Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates vs Milwaukee Brewers, 25 May 2025, home run. Not a pitch speed.

    Guinness prints 122.9 mph on 25 May 2025 against Milwaukee. ESPN prints a home run that left the bat at 122.9 mph. Giancarlo Stanton's earlier home-run mark is 121.7 mph on MLB's list and 121.8 mph on ESPN, so Stanton is not a row.

    Official
    MLB.com (opens source in a new tab)

Reference

Specs

Batter
Oneil Cruz
Scope
Statcast exit velocity since 2015
Speed
122.9 mph
Date
25 May 2025

Context

Background

MLB.com prints the hardest-hit ball in Statcast history as 122.9 mph by Oneil Cruz on 25 May 2025. Guinness prints an exit velocity of 122.9 mph by Cruz of the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Milwaukee Brewers on 25 May 2025, and says Statcast has measured exit velocity since 2015. ESPN prints a home run that left the bat at 122.9 mph and splashed into the Allegheny River.

The scope is the hardest tracked batted ball, not the fastest pitch. Cruz's own 122.4 mph single is the previous row. Accounts of Giancarlo Stanton's earlier mark do not share one number, so that ball is absent.

Spot a wrong number?

Every report is read by a person, and corrections are dated on the page.