How 2 swings show Oneil could be a star

What can you tell from two swings of the bat? Maybe that Oneil Cruz is about to be a breakout slugger.

The Pirates' 23-year-old, 6-foot-7 shortstop played only two games when making his big league debut at the very end of the 2021 season. He batted just nine times. He put five balls in play.

Two of those five are all you need to see Cruz's potential … and that was even before Cruz showed off light-tower power this weekend with a home run onto the roof of a building beyond right field at the Rays' Spring Training ballpark.

Here's how a pair of batted balls show MLB's No. 26 prospect could be a monster at the plate.

No. 1: The 118 mph line drive

In the seventh inning of Cruz's MLB debut, he let it rip. Cruz turned around a 95 mph sinker at the bottom edge of the strike zone and lined it into right field at 118.2 mph.

Very few players can generate that kind of exit velocity, especially when driving a ball in the air. The ones who can tend to be big-time sluggers.

Here's the list of players who hit a ball 118 mph or harder last season. There are only eight.

• Giancarlo Stanton (14)
• Aaron Judge (3)
• Oneil Cruz, Shohei Ohtani, Pete Alonso, Manny Machado, Franchy Cordero, Chris Gittens (1)

And here's the list of players who have hit a 118+ mph line drive or fly ball in the history of Statcast tracking (since 2015). There are only 15.

• Giancarlo Stanton (22)
• Aaron Judge (10)
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Pete Alonso, Gary Sánchez (2)
• Oneil Cruz, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Manny Machado, Carlos González, Aristides Aquino, Tyler Flowers, Franchy Cordero, Chris Gittens, Daniel Palka (1)

There are booms and busts on that list. Cruz could obviously go down either path. But maximum exit velocity is meaningful because it shows you how much a player has in his gas tank. If you can hit the ball at the extreme end of exit velocity, those balls are a lot more likely to be hits. If you can hit the ball in the air at the extreme end of exit velocity, those are going to be extra-base hits and home runs.

Cruz being able to hit a baseball 118 mph doesn't mean he'll be a star -- there are still the Palkas and the Gittenses of the world -- but it shows you he has the potential to hit like the Stantons and Judges. Not a lot of players have that potential. Cruz doesn't have to hit every ball 118 mph, but being able to hit the ball that hard is a skill, and it separates him from a large portion of Major League hitters.

It should inspire some confidence that Cruz is a top hitting prospect, not just a one-dimensional clubber who can run into a big homer but only on the rare occasions he connects. Cruz is supposed to develop into a good hitter -- the top-of-the-scale max exit velo just adds an extra level to how dangerous he might be.

No. 2: The HR off a 1-foot-high changeup

In Cruz's second game, the Pirates' last game of the season, he hit his first home run. Let's take a look at that home run.

That is a home run off a Mychal Givens changeup at his shins -- 1.23 feet off the ground, to be exact. It's not easy to hit that pitch for a home run, and Cruz sent it to deep right-center field.

And there's another factor of added difficulty: the home run came on an 0-2 pitch. In fact, it was the second-lowest 0-2 pitch hit for a home run last year.

Lowest 0-2 pitches hit for HR in 2021

1. Jose Altuve: 0.85 feet (June 10)
2. Oneil Cruz: 1.23 feet (Oct. 3)
3. José Iglesias: 1.24 feet (July 2)
4. Yordan Alvarez: 1.28 feet (Oct. 2)
5. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 1.38 feet (Aug. 8)

Cruz is a tall hitter, too, so that pitch height is especially low for him. It's one thing for the 5-foot-6 Altuve to homer off a low pitch; it's another for the 6-foot-7 Cruz to do it. The pitch Cruz hit out was only 4 1/2 inches higher than the one Altuve did … but Cruz is 13 inches taller than Altuve.

Cruz's home run was also one of the lowest offspeed pitches hit for a homer all year (ninth-lowest), and of the top 10, his was one of the hardest-hit (103.8 mph) and longest (408 feet). The gist is, if you're golfing out a bad pitch, it's hard to get the juice on it for anything more than a wall-scraper. But Cruz barreled it up like a normal home run.

It's not a 118 mph rocket, but it is an impressive piece of hitting. And hopefully it's a reflection of Cruz being a multidimensional hitter who can handle difficult pitches in difficult situations and do more than just hit the ball really, really hard.

If Cruz can hit the ball really, really hard, and hit secondary stuff, and hit in pitchers' counts, then the Pirates will have a Rookie of the Year frontrunner in 2022.