A-Rod two behind Mays on HR list

A-Rod went deep on Friday. Way deep. (USATSI)

Alex Rodriguez‘s return to baseball following his suspension has been surprisingly productive so far. The Yankees sometimes third baseman/most of the time DH came into Friday hitting .286/.394/.571 (169 OPS+) with two doubles, two home runs and seven runs batted in in nine games.

In his first at-bat Friday night, A-Rod hit his third home run of the season. And, well, look at this moonshot:

That was absolutely crushed. Rodriguez didn’t scrape the wall.

In fact, according to MLBAM’s tracking system, that was the longest home run in baseball this season, measuring 471 feet.

The previous longest homer this year was this 466 foot blast by Adrian Gonzalez, the third homer of his three-homer game. The massive Steven Souza homer the other day was measured at 414 feet by MLBAM. I don’t measure ’em, I’m just the messenger.

A-Rod hit his second long ball of the night in the sixth and is now sitting on 658 career home runs, two behind Willie Mays on the all-time list. Here’s that homer:

MLBAM measured that ball at 115 mph off the bat, tied for the hardest hit home run of the season. So in one night A-Rod hit the farthest homer and the hardest hit homer of the 2015 season. Lots of season left to go, of course.

The Yankees beat the Rays 5-4 on Friday and Rodriguez drove in four of their five runs. In addition to a two homers, he also broke a 4-4 tie with an RBI single in the eighth inning. He was a one-man army.

A-Rod finished Friday’s game with a .344/.432/.781 (230 OPS+) with four home runs and 11 RBI on the young season.

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