Rangers Center Fielder Leody Taveras Made a Catch So Good It Broke an Advanced Statistic
Rangers center fielder Leody Taveras robbed Astros’ Yordan Alvarez of a home run during Wednesday’s ALCS Game 3, showcasing his stunning range in the outfield to bring back a ball that looked destined for the seats.
Alvarez absolutely crushed the baseball, hitting it 111.1 mph off the bat as it traveled 416 feet with a 25-degree launch angle. Somehow, Taveras was still able to commit one of the most electric postseason home run robberies in recent memory.
This hit would have been a home run in 22 of 30 major league ballparks, but Taveras found a way to snag it from over the fence.
His catch was so impressive that it effectively defied one of baseball’s advanced metrics, xBA, or expected batting average.
According to Baseball Savant, the xBA on Alvarez’s hit was 1.000. Essentially, every other past comparable hit, in terms of factors such as exit velocity and launch angle, during the Statcast era (since 2015) has resulted in a hit, until Alvarez’s.
Taveras’s robbery in center field denied Alvarez of a hit on a batted ball profile that had never once produced an out during the past eight seasons.
Although this isn’t the first instance of a ball with an xBA of 1.000 resulting in an out, it’s certainly a rarity.
MLB fans were absolutely stunned by Taveras’s jaw-dropping defensive highlight in center field, which kept Texas within striking distance in Game 3.
