The wait to get Oneil Cruz to the majors took months. His performance made it worth it.
In his first game with the Pirates this season -- and third in the majors overall -- Cruz showed all of his tools, setting new team and league highs in exit velocity, sprint speed and arm strength.
"He can affect the game in a lot of ways and we saw it tonight," Derek Shelton said.
Cruz showed he can do that at the game's highest level, and with his talent level, he can set records.
“Whatever’s gonna get broken is gonna get broken," Cruz jokingly said through interpreter Mike Gonzalez.
Let's take a look at some of those records he broke Monday, starting on offense.
In the bottom of the third, Cruz got a hold of a Caleb Killian up and away four-seamer and crushed it to left-center with an exit velocity of 112.9 mph, the hardest hit ball for any Pirate batter this year:
112.9 MPH off the bat of Oneil Cruz for his first hit of the season 😳 pic.twitter.com/XWM8ZIGrlK
— MLB (@MLB) June 21, 2022
The previous record was held by Ke'Bryan Hayes at 112.4 mph. Last season, Cruz record a base hit with a 118.2 mph exit velocity, the highest for any Pirate hitter since batted ball started to be tracked in 2015.
It was arguably not even Cruz's most impressive accomplishment in the inning. In the top half, Cubs catcher Willson Contreras hit a ball in the hole at shortstop. Cruz was able to backhand it, and after a quick double clutch and shuffle, he fired it to first baseman Michael Chavis at 96.7 mph:
So: ONeil Cruz has been back up for about 25 minutes. He's already got the hardest tracked throw by an infielder of the season (96.7). I think that's going to work. pic.twitter.com/0vOCbs6BVo
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) June 21, 2022
That's the hardest thrown ball of any infielder this season. Not just for the Pirates, but league wide.
"It's like, ‘You had to do that to me? You had to throw one harder than I threw it off the mound?'" starter JT Brubaker joked.
Chavis said afterwards he didn't feel the difference between Cruz's throw and a softer toss, he saw it based on its flight path.
"The way it hangs in the air is a little bit different," Chavis said. "The same way, you know a guy that's pitching, a guy that throws really hard, it hangs up on it a little more, the ride or whatever you want to call it. It's pretty much the same thing where I thought it was going to go down, and it just hung."
The only infielder to throw a ball harder on an assist was the Padres' Fernando Tatis Jr. in 2020.
To top it all off, Cruz set the top three fastest recorded sprint speeds for the Pirates this season, highlighted by a sprint home in the second inning, maxing out at 31.5 feet per second. For reference, an elite speed league-wide is about 30 feet per second.
In one swoop, Cruz gave a solid sample of what he could do in the majors. To do it in his first game back makes it even better for the 23-year-old phenom.
"It feels great," Cruz said. "To be able to make a good, solid, hard throw, to be able to hit the ball hard, to be able to help the team win, to be able to come through defensively and offensively, it’s amazing."
A couple other historical notes to close this out:
• Per Elias Sports Bureau, Cruz is the sixth Pirate in the Live Ball Era (since 1920) to record at least one RBI in each of his first three major-league games. The other five are:
Cookie Lavagetto, 1934 (first five games)
Cotton Tierney, 1920 (first four games)
Clyde Barhart, 1920 (first four games)
R C Stevens, 1958
Tony Piet, 1931
• Cruz is the first Pirate with seven RBIs through their first three career games. Cruz drove home four as part of a 2-for-5 performance Monday.
• Per Stats by STATS, Cruz is the second player since 1920 (when RBIs became an official stat) to record multiple total bases, an RBI hit to drive in a teammate and scored a run in his first three games. The other was Joe DiMaggio.