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Brian McCann's 200th home run and the most line drive dinger of the year

Elsa/Getty Images

So far in the first few games of the 2015 season, the New York Yankees have not been entirely impressive. As of April 13, despite their (exactly) league-average offense, the team sits at 2–4. Thanks to their 14–4 trouncing of the Boston Red Sox on Sunday, the offense is looking a little better and with three home runs in the game, they now have a total of nine dingers on the season. As they play more, things will start to average out, but right at this very moment they hold the distinction of hitting the most line drive home run of the year.

After the Yankees scored seven runs off Clay Buchholz in the first inning, the offense continued their onslaught for another seven runs over the rest of the game. The final run of the night was a solo shot off the bat of Brian McCann against Edward Mujica in the eighth inning. It ended up as a special one, being the 200th home run of his career:

As you can see in the video, the ball moves pretty quickly off the bat, but just barely leaves the park as it bounces off the top of the right field wall, which you can see in the diagram:

This home run has the honor of being the shortest home run of the early season with a true distance of 344 feet. It was also the lowest homer so far as it only reached 45 feet at its highest point in the air. Last season, only four home runs were lower. Essentially, Brian McCann owns the most line drive home run of the year.

The funny thing about this dinger is that McCann had to pass his teammate Stephen Drew to get to the top of the list as the Yankee second baseman had already reached the top ten lowest home runs with his solo shot in the first inning. In fact, Sunday was a good day for low, line drive-homers as Dalton Pompey (55 ft) and Luis Valbuena (54 ft) also made the list on the same day.

Of the nine home runs that the Yankees have hit so far, only Chris Young's home run off Alexi Ogando has even approached 100 feet in the air (93). Only two of their home runs–Chase Headley's home run from the 10th and Alex Rodriguez's blast off Daniel Norris–have reached 400 feet in distance. It's no wonder that Mark Simon of ESPN has the Yankees ranked toward the bottom of the league in hard-hit rate.

We know the offense has been bad, but it's still super early. As of right now the Yankees are mostly shooting dingers just over the wall. It will be interesting to see how long this trend continues before someone just hits an absolute bomb.