O'Hoppe comes up big with 'sick' 467-foot homer

SAN FRANCISCO -- There's gone, and then there's gone. Logan O'Hoppe's game-tying two-run blast off Giants starter Keaton Winn in Saturday's 4-3 Angels win at Oracle Park was nothing short of obliterated.

The Halos' second-year catcher came to the plate with Taylor Ward on first and one out in the sixth. Winn, who had allowed a Mickey Moniak home run in the second but nothing else in his first five innings, left a 2-1 sinker over the middle of the plate for O'Hoppe, who hammered it a Statcast-projected 467 feet at 110.1 mph off the bat.

O'Hoppe paused for a spell before breaking into his home run trot, watching as the ball landed up high in the left-field bleachers, just in front of the massive glove next to the iconic Coke bottle slide.

"I knew it was gone," he said, "but I had no idea how far it went."

O'Hoppe's long ball was nearly 40 feet longer than his previous career best (428 feet vs. the Guardians last September). It was also the fifth-longest home run for the Angels since 2022, the year O'Hoppe debuted. Only Shohei Ohtani (493 feet) and Mike Trout (490, 473 and 472 feet) are in front of O'Hoppe on that list, with Trout's 473-foot shot on April 1 in Miami registering as the team's longest of the current season.

It's also tied for the fourth-longest home run Oracle Park has seen since Statcast began tracking in 2015. Gary Sánchez also hit a 467-footer in '19, and Kennys Vargas (471 feet, '17), Jorge Alfaro (473 feet, '19) and Ian Desmond (477 feet, '15) round out the leaderboard.

But more importantly, it put the Angels in position to take their first two games in San Francisco.

"He's been swinging the bat the way we know he's capable of," manager Ron Washington said of O'Hoppe. "He's been involved in a lot of the things we've been doing lately on the offensive side, so that's good, right now. … It's not just one or two guys that's trying to carry the load. He's definitely strong enough to carry the load."

Once O'Hoppe's monster shot tied the game at 3, the Angels took the lead in decidedly less dramatic fashion on Luis Rengifo's flare to left-center in the seventh. That run was made possible by some heads-up baserunning from Nolan Schanuel, who drew a two-out walk, swiped his first career bag and then advanced to third on an errant throw from Giants catcher Curt Casali.

Starter Patrick Sandoval, who surrendered a two-run homer to Giants center fielder Heliot Ramos two batters into his outing but only allowed one additional run as he grinded to complete five innings, had a front-row seat of O'Hoppe's game-tying shot from the dugout railing.

"It was sick," Sandoval said. "Awesome for him to come through clutch like that; he's been doing it the last few weeks and coming up big for us."

In his first season at the helm of the Angels, Washington has preached the importance of his young players finding consistency in the big leagues. There is plenty of potential on the roster, but it's really a matter of being able to replicate high levels of production day in and day out.

Given the streaky nature of baseball, there will always be ebbs and flows in performance. But O'Hoppe has emerged as one of the Angels' more consistent players to this point in the season. His .811 OPS ranks third on the team -- behind Trout and Kevin Pillar, who both have 100 fewer at-bats -- and his 31 RBIs are tied with Jo Adell for the second most.

O'Hoppe has particularly hit his stride of late, hitting safely in eight straight games and recording an extra-base hit in six in a row, the longest active streak in the Majors.

Hitting what currently ranks as the fourth-longest home run in the big leagues this season -- tied with Aaron Judge, and shorter than only three shots from Trout (473 feet), Judge (473 feet) and Bobby Witt Jr. (468 feet) -- is not what O'Hoppe will be most proud of at the end of the day, though.

"It tied the game. That's what made me happy about it," he said. "Whether it goes a foot over the wall or a couple feet over the wall, it doesn't matter. It matters how many points are on the board at the time of the game."