Arenado's 482-ft homer leaves Coors on a hop

DENVER -- Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado left the building Tuesday night.

Arenado sent his 38th home run of the season, a two-run shot off the Cardinals’ Michael Wacha, a Statcast-projected 482 feet -- tied for third-longest in the Majors this season. The homer, which held up in a 2-1 Rockies victory, hit the concourse and bounced out of Coors Field and into a parking lot.

Arenado kept his hands back long enough to swat Wacha’s 86.2 mph changeup. Hoping to use a little body language to keep the ball fair, Arenado dropped to his right knee as the ball flew … and flew.

“I was just kind of like, ‘Oh, don’t go foul,’ but it stayed fair, thank God,” Arenado said. “I’ve hit some balls foul, but they just kind of turn over so you can’t really tell how far it’s going to go. But that one, I was able to backspin it enough. I’m just happy it went out.”

Arenado's first-inning shot was the longest of his career, with his previous best having been 464 feet on Sept. 13, 2018.

The longest recorded homer from 2019 came off the bat of the Rangers’ Nomar Mazara -- a 505-footer (which tied the Rockies’ Trevor Story’s 2018 blast for the longest since Statcast began tracking) off the White Sox’s Reynaldo Lopez on June 21. The Rockies’ Ian Desmond sent one of off the Cubs’ Mike Mongomery 486 feet on June 10. Arenado matched Mazara (off Montgomery on March 28) and the D-backs’ Ketel Marte (off the Mets’ Steven Matz on June 2).

“I knew I got it good,” Arenado said. “I don’t know how those distances work. I don’t really believe in them. Yordan Alvarez hit [two] yesterday and they said only, like, 420 maybe? [429 and then 416, officially] He hit it like into the third deck in Houston. I think that ball might’ve gone a little farther than mine.

“As long as it’s fair and it goes out of the ballpark, it doesn’t matter.”