Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez was punished for hitting this ball too hard.
During the first inning of Houston’s 3-0 loss to the Angels on Thursday, Alvarez smoked a ball to right field that surely appeared to be a home run off the bat.
Since the ball was hit so high, however, it struck the scaffolding below the roof at Daikin Park before ricocheting and falling into the stands to the right of the foul pole.
Home plate umpire Chris Conroy initially ruled it a foul ball, with the call standing after it was sent for review.
“The roof here closed is covered by universal ground rules, which are when the ball strikes the roof over fair territory, it remains live,” Conroy later explained, according to the Houston Chronicle. “And then it’s basically wherever it strikes the ground after that is what the call is going to be.
“So the ball initially struck the roof over fair territory, so it was live. But then it caromed into the stands prior to the foul pole. So that made it a foul ball.”
Similar ground rules have been put in place for domed and retractable roof stadiums, but rarely are balls like Alvarez’s — which had an exit velocity of 108.9 miles per hour, according to Baseball Savant — ever caught up in the exposed scaffolding.
“That’s probably the second ball I’ve ever seen hit that part of the roof,” Astros manager Joe Espada said. “He crushed that ball. That ball would have landed upper deck.”
Espada added that the umpires did make the right call, but insisted that, if not for the roof, it would have been a home run.
“Definitely that ball would have been a homer,” he added. “But they did get the call right.”
Alvarez said that he was certain his hit would have been out of the ballpark, but wanted to clarify with the umpire if it was a foul ball.
“Yes, 100 percent,” the three-time All-Star told reporters through an interpreter when asked if the ball would have been a home run. “I was just checking to see that it wasn’t a foul ball.
“But later on, we saw that it was foul. So things happened how they meant to happen.”
