17-07-2025
No, Trevor Bauer did not give up a 594-foot HR in return from Japan's minor leagues
Former Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer hasn't appeared in a big-league game since MLB handed down a 194-game suspension for sexual misconduct back in 2021. And the 34-year-old's road back to MLB could not being going worse in Japan.
But for as bad as Bauer has been with the Yokohama BayStars in NPB, he was not on the wrong end of baseball history this week. Bauer, who was sent down to the Japanese minor leagues after posting an NPB-worst ERA in 2025, made his return to NPB on Wednesday where he took yet another loss.
In the sixth inning, Bauer gave up a no-doubt home run to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp's Elehuris Montero. It was a bomb, sure. But social media claimed that Montero's home run traveled an impossibly far 594 feet.
Take a look:
This isn't taking anything way from Montero's home run. He crushed it. But that homer clearly didn't come close to a baseball-record distance. It seemed low 400s, at most. That 594-foot figure seemingly originated from Twitter/X's awful AI bot Grok and a parody account. Still, fans ran with the number and it showed up everywhere.
The real distance, though, didn't even crack 400 feet. According to The Athletic's Levi Weaver, the Carp measured the home run at 393 feet.
Twitter/X was off by some 200 feet.
If we're looking at history that Bauer actually has a chance to be a part of in Japan, it's that he's on pace to post the worst ERA- in league history by a foreign player.
That's more realistic than a 600-foot home run.
