Two-Way MLB Draft Prospect Jac Caglianone Crushes 516-Foot Homer Over Huge Scoreboard
There’s a good chance that Florida’s Jac Caglianone will be the first player to hear his name called at this year’s MLB draft, and his prodigious display of power on Tuesday night in Gainesville is a major reason why.
In the fourth inning of the Gators’ game against Jacksonville, Caglianone crushed a home run that cleared the tall scoreboard in right field. It was projected to have traveled a whopping 516 feet. In the video of the play, the ball simply disappears because it flew too high and far for the camera to track it.
Caglianone has now homered in seven straight games. The NCAA Division I record for consecutive games with a homer in eight.
Caglianone is one of the best power hitters in college baseball history. Last season, he crushed 33 homers in just 71 games, the most homers in a season since the NCAA started using BBCOR bats in 2011. (BBCOR bats metal bats that perform more similarly to wood bats than the old aluminum bats that allowed college players to put up gaudy stat lines like Pete Incaviglia’s NCAA record 48 homers in 75 games in 1985.) This season Caglianone already has 21 homers in 36 games.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Caglianone is also a fantastic pitching prospect, with a fastball capable of reaching triple digits and a changeup that Fangraphs describes as “great” to go along with a slider and cutter. He has weak spots at both positions (wildness on the mound and a tendency to chase balls out of the strike zone as a hitter) but his potential as a two-way player makes him one of the top prospects in this year’s draft. Fangraphs ranks him as the No. 3 draft-eligible player, while MLB.com has him at No. 5.
