460 feet?! Manzardo ups ante in 3rd straight AFL game with a homer

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- And for his latest trick, the Great Manzardo made a baseball disappear.

Well, not so much disappear as displaced a baseball deep into the Arizona night -- 460 feet away, making it the longest home run measured by Statcast in this year's Arizona Fall League.

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The dinger marked No. 58 overall prospect Kyle Manzardo's third straight game in which he's gone deep for Peoria, which fell 7-4 to Salt River at Salt River Fields on Wednesday. The Guardians slugger sits in a five-way tie atop the AFL leaderboard with his three homers for the Javelinas, but his latest is what got folks in the Valley of the Sun and beyond talking.

"It's a rush; it feels great, I'm not going to lie," said the left-handed hitter who finished the night 3-for-5 with two RBIs. "I mean, any ball that goes over the wall feels great to me [when] you get that rush and excitement."

The prodigious tater came in the third inning. Up 2-1 in the count, Manzardo saw Pirates right-hander J.C. Flowers spin an 87.4 mph slider on the inner half and punished it with an exit velocity of 108.3 mph. The resulting 460-feet moonshot wasn't just the longest homer of the AFL; it was also Manzardo's longest Statcast-measured homer of 2023, beating out a 455-footer he hit for Triple-A Durham in the Rays system on April 22. For added context, Guardians Major Leaguers only hit one ball farther in 2023: Josh Bell's 464-foot blast on June 28.

"[He's a] righty, three-quarters slot, was missing fastballs armside early," Manzardo said. "He was spinning the slider a lot to me, so I was looking for one that started a little farther away from me because I figured it would break right into my barrel. Got it up, was on time to put a good swing on it."

Manzardo's latest power push comes on the heels of an impressive final sprint during the regular season with Triple-A Columbus.

Dealt from Tampa Bay to Cleveland at the Trade Deadline for Aaron Civale, the 2021 second-rounder didn't debut with the Guardians' International League affiliate until Aug. 24 after rehabbing a left shoulder injury that had kept him out since July 6. Manzardo admitted he still needed about three games with the Clippers to get comfortable, but once he saw competitive live pitching at the Minors' top level again, his knack for hitting returned.

Over 17 games in September, he slugged .651 and posted a .998 OPS. Thirteen of his 16 hits went for extra bases (six homers, seven doubles) in that span. That's a trend that's continued thus far in the Fall League; five of his eight hits have gone for extra bases -- including a ninth-inning double that left the bat at 100.1 mph -- and he owns a .267/.389/.633 line through seven games with the Javelinas.

"Backing the ball up, giving it a chance to get there," Manzardo said of the keys to his two-month power surge. "Making later swing decisions, trying not to swing right out of the hand plays a big part."

Carrying his September production into the fall is another strong indicator that the Washington State product likely should compete for a Major League spot on a Guardians team that ranked last in the Majors with only 127 home runs in 2023.

But Fall League work remains, and Cleveland sent Manzardo to the Fall League to not only gain at-bats but also focus on his work against fellow left-handers – he hit only .159 against southpaws during the regular season -- and continue to improve defensively at the cold corner.

For now, though, the power is becoming commonplace in Manzardo's game, and he'll do what he can to keep it there.

"I'll do the exact thing tomorrow that I did today and the day before that and the day before that and the days before that when I wasn't swinging it great," he said. "Baseball is repetition."

Wednesday's loss was Peoria's first of the year after the Javelinas opened AFL play 7-0-1. No. 21 Tigers prospect Justice Bigbie went 3-for-4 with three RBIs for the victorious Salt River side. A.J. Vukovich finished 2-for-3 with three stolen bases, and fellow D-backs prospect Ivan Melendez contributed his own 420-foot homer -- his first of the fall.