Behold! The Most Improbable Home Run of the Season

Lawrence Butler does a lot of things well, but he cannot hit a high fastball. Entering play on June 2, Butler had just one career barrel against an elevated fastball: A deep fly out off an 87.5 mph Trevor Williams “heater” in the dog days of 2023. In 2025, he’s whiffing on over half his swings at high heaters, per the Baseball Savant-defined shadow zones at the top edge of the strike zone. (That’s attack zones 11, 12, and 13 for the Savant search heads.)

Most of the hitters with high whiff rates on top-rail four-seamers have steep swing planes. (Aaron Judge and Luis Robert Jr. are two notable examples.) Not Butler: His 31 degree swing tilt is actually a bit flatter than the major league average. Butler’s primary issue is timing — his average attack direction on these pitches is oriented 18 degrees toward the opposite field; his zero degree attack angle is perfectly flat. Whatever the reason, it’s a clear hole, and certain pitchers are primed to exploit it.

Joe Ryan is one such pitcher. Despite its mediocre velocity, Ryan’s fastball dominates at the top of the zone because of its vertical approach angle, which is the flattest among all major starting pitchers. From a low slot (24 degree arm angle) and a vertical release point just 4.8 feet off the ground, Ryan manages to generate a bit of backspin on the pitch. Nearly all hitters — not just Butler — struggle to punish fastballs with super flat approach angles, particularly when pitchers like Ryan hit their spots.

In 2024, Ryan generated a 42.1% whiff rate while holding hitters to a .141 xwOBA when he located his fastball on the top rail. And when Ryan reared back and threw his fastball at or above 95 mph, hitters literally couldn’t touch it. He threw 48 such pitches last season; the whiff rate on them was 58.1%, and the three balls in play were popups with an expected batting average of .000. It has been more of the same this season; Ryan peppers the top rail and hitters have been mostly helpless, especially when he reaches back for his top velocity.

To summarize: Butler can’t hit elevated fastballs; Ryan throws a near-unhittable elevated fastball. And yet. And yet! On Tuesday evening, Ryan threw Butler a 96 mph heater perfectly located on the top rail, and Butler launched it over the center field wall:

That pitch had a -2.68 degree VAA, the flattest pitch that any hitter has homered on this year.

How did this happen? There’s a broadcast cliché that goes something like: A home run isn’t hit, it’s pitched. To find out how Ryan pitched this home run, let’s go on a journey through the dozen pitches Butler saw Tuesday evening in West Sacramento.

Plate Appearance No. 1: Butler Laces a Double

This one ended quickly. Ryan’s first pitch of the night was a 94 mph four-seamer, piped middle-middle. These sort of get-me-over fastballs on the first pitch of the game (FPOTG) are shockingly common, as Sam Miller recently found. A full 94% — 94%! — of all first pitches of the game are either four-seam fastballs or sinkers. Leadoff hitters can reasonably expect to see a heater, especially if they are smart enough to subscribe to Sam’s Substack:

Butler pulverized this FPOTG fastball, crushing it 113 mph and missing a home run by a few feet. (In fact, that would have been a home run in nine of 30 parks.) This swing, I think, instilled a deep fear in Ryan’s heart, informing his tentative approach in subsequent encounters.

Plate Appearance No. 2: Butler Works a Walk

To right-handed hitters, Ryan throws five pitches. In addition to his typical heavy four-seam usage, he’ll use his sweeper (18% usage) as an out pitch, and mix in his sinker, slider and splitter in roughly equal measure. Against lefties, the pitch mix isn’t as balanced. His four-seam usage is five percentage points higher, at 58%; he throws the splitter 22% of the time. He’ll occasionally toss an early-count backdoor sweeper (11% usage to lefties) to steal a called strike, but in large part, Ryan attacks lefties with the four-seamer up/splitter down combination. The more limited nature of his attack partially explains his aggressive handedness splits this season: Ryan’s 19.4% strikeout rate against lefties is nearly half his rate against righties (36.4%).

Accordingly, Ryan threw only four-seamers and splitters to Butler in each of their three battles. Cognizant of Butler’s first-pitch aggression in their first encounter, Ryan went with the splitter on 0-0. Unfortunately, he yanked it. It looked like a ball out of the hand, and Butler didn’t consider swinging at any point. Same with the splitter on 1-0 — Ryan doubled up on the offspeed, and once again, the execution was lacking:

Down 2-0, Ryan tried to crowd Butler up and in with a heater, but missed a hair inside. At 3-0, the plate appearance was basically finished — after landing a fastball for a called strike, Ryan yanked a heater inside on 3-1, and Butler had the free base.

Plate Appearance No. 3: Butler Homers

Ryan shouldn’t have even been in this situation. With two outs in the inning, he got to two strikes on Denzel Clarke and nailed the corner with an inch-perfect sweeper. This wasn’t one of these situations where the pitcher throws a pitch that technically hits the strike zone, but he’s missed his target by so much that the catcher’s dramatic glove movement fools the umpire; Ryan nailed his target, Christian Vázquez barely moved his mitt, and the umpire robbed him blind.

Clarke singled on the next pitch, extending the inning. So Ryan could be forgiven for pitching with some frustration. But on the first pitch to Butler in their third encounter, he stayed disciplined, throwing yet another first-pitch splitter, thinking back to that first plate appearance and looking to prey on Butler’s aggression:

If Ryan thought he was in trouble after Butler’s first-inning barrel, he must have known he was in it deep after seeing Butler’s reaction to this splitter. This one did exactly what Ryan wanted, looking like a strike for most of its flight path before dipping out of the strike zone. Admit it — if you’re Butler in this situation, you’re probably swinging:

But that’s not what Butler did. He tracked it all the way, spitting on it with ease.

At 1-0, runners on the corners, and Jacob Wilson on deck, Ryan knew he needed to land one in the zone. He gamely challenged Butler with the heater, and the location was close enough to the inside edge to stay off Butler’s barrel. He swung late, fouling it off and evening the count at 1-1:

After yet another yanked splitter brought the count to 2-1, Ryan had painted himself into a corner. To this point in the game, he’d thrown four splitters to Butler. Three were uncompetitive; the fourth Butler tracked the whole way. He needed a strike. He went back to the splitter, and got the call, but almost certainly not in the way he intended:

Vázquez did have the target set up there, but that tends to be Vázquez’s general target on these splitters, likely because if Ryan aims front hip, it will hit its intended target just below the zone. Here, it just sort of floats; Butler, surprised, took it for a strike. It nipped the corner, bringing the count to 2-2.

After throwing five splitters to Butler, all of which (I’d argue) failed to some degree, it felt like it had to be heaters from here on out. Certainly Ryan knew from the scouting report that, given this chance to punch out Butler, the high heater would be a perfect weapon, calibrated to exploit Butler’s hole at the top of the zone:

Ryan’s 2-2 execution was just a fraction off. The velocity was plus, topping that magic 95 mph number where hitters had never — not once — punished Ryan with a barrel. Butler laid off, bringing the count full.

With contact king Jacob Wilson ready to break open a bases loaded egg in the event of a walk, the splitter all but ruled out, and Butler’s tendencies hanging over the plate appearance, there was only one option left for Ryan. To his credit, he executed to perfection — 95.8 mph, his sixth-firmest fastball of the season, right to the top rail, even running in on Butler’s hands.

Of course, Butler knew the scouting report, too. Generally on these high fastballs, Butler recognizes the pitch too late; if he manages to get his hands in position to attack the pitch, it tends to be a harmless fly ball to the left fielder. You can see his frustration with his approach to a similar pitch from Bryan Woo:

Butler wasn’t late this time. He attacked the fastball out in front, catching it two feet from the center of his body:

It is incredible anyone was able to homer off this pitch. The fact that it was Lawrence Butler — a man who had never once barreled up a high fastball across his entire career, except off Trevor Williams, which, let’s be honest, doesn’t really count — makes this a true unicorn event. I don’t know if I can fully deliver on the headline — there have been nearly 2,000 homers this season, and I can’t say I’ve seen every single one of them. But I would be surprised if there’s been a more unlikely home run this season. All it took was a pitcher painted into a corner, and a hitter who made it his mission not to blow his chance.