
Hey there! The recent achievement by Heliot Ramos being the first righty to ever hit a home run directly into McCovey Cove got me wondering how many right handed home runs hit in ALL MLB parks would splash down in McCovey. This is every home run that I could find that (I think) would be a direct splash hit into the Cove since 2015.
My overall take is that I am pretty surprised how few there actually were league-wide. The minimum distance required to splashdown is approximately 369ft if you hug the foul pole, but that distance quickly increases to 400+ft if you go a mere 20-30ft towards centerfield, on top of that, you need a minimum of about 30 degree launch angle to have any shot of getting over the 20ft wall at Oracle. After all that, it left me with a very small sample size due to most oppo homers being short homers that barely make it over the fence or just would never have the height to get over the wall at Oracle.
I wanted to go all the way back to 2000 when Oracle Park first opened, but I was having a really hard time finding any hard data before 2015 when Statcast became more prevalent in the league. If you know of more that go back to 2000, I will absolutely add them to my list! Also if you have a suggestion of how to find more without days of scouring the internet, let me know!
To find these home runs I used Baseball Savant to search for 370+ft opposite field home runs by righties that had a launch angle of 30 or more and then used clips and some Google Maps help to judge whether they would get into McCovey. Here's my excel sheet I created to compile the data https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cTN_n5Uek-FVijLyXn2GkzgM960KQDmQ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115065744505008883330&rtpof=true&sd=true
9 comments
If McCovey was in left field, how many opposite field lefty home runs would make it?
Thanks for the info, Scooby Doo!
This added perspective really helps emphasize how amazing the feat was. Thank you for putting this together. I hope Ramos sees it.
10 if you count Coors? Well Coors is an MLB park so why wouldn’t you count it?
The title is misleading, it is 7 oppo homers not 7 righties, but otherwise, this is awesome.
Cool work
Posey hit one but hit a water cannon. Do post season HR not count?

Glad to know that Cubby Contreras would have hit it into McCovey Cove