Why Padres’ Ty France’s fluky roof ball isn’t as clear cut as Statcast makes it seem, tell me about this news today

During Game 1 of the NL Division Series between the San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field, Ty France came up in the ninth inning with a runner on and launched a towering fly ball off Brewers reliever Trevor Megill. The ball struck a roof cable/structure in fair territory high above left field, caromed down, and was caught on the warning track by Milwaukee left fielder Jackson Chourio for an out under the ballpark’s ground rules.

The Big Lead

The play ignited immediate controversy because France and the Padres believed it would have been a go-ahead, two-run home run. However, public debate quickly turned to whether Statcast data truly provides a clear-cut answer:

The Big Lead

• What Statcast suggests on the surface: Statcast tracked the ball with an exit velocity of 105.3 mph and a steep 49-degree launch angle. Batted balls with a 49-degree launch angle almost never clear the fence in Major League ballparks; historically in the Statcast era, almost all balls in that bucket end up as flyouts (an expected batting average around .050). At American Family Field specifically, no tracked home run had ever exceeded a 46-degree launch angle. Based on those raw numbers and comparative park overlays, Statcast models suggested the trajectory would have only cleared the short porch in Houston (Minute Maid/Daikin Park) and resulted in an out virtually everywhere else.

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• Why it isn’t as clear-cut as the metrics make it seem:

  1. Interrupted flight path: Statcast projections rely on standard parabolic models, but France’s ball was deflected mid-flight while still carrying considerable momentum. The official tracked distance (around 325 feet) was simply where it landed in Chourio’s glove after bouncing off the structure, not an uninterrupted measurement of how deep the drive could have carried.

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  2. Backspin and pull-side flight: France noted after the game that he put pure backspin on the ball to the pull side. High-spin fly balls pulled down the line can defy generic launch-angle tables because they don’t lose velocity the same way as balls driven toward the deeper power alleys.

  3. The fair/foul uncertainty: Even if the ball had enough carry to clear the fence, extreme sky-high launch angles near the foul pole often slice foul as they descend. Statcast can project distance in a vacuum, but it cannot definitively reconstruct whether France’s drive would have maintained its line or hooked outside the foul pole before crossing the wall.

  4. Ballpark ground rules vs. projection: Statcast measures physics, but baseball operates on local venue rules. Because American Family Field treats roof and cable strikes in fair territory as live balls, Chourio catching the carom made it an out regardless of whether the projection engine considered it an out or a near-homer.

Statcast makes the play look like an open-and-shut lazy flyout on paper, but the sheer height of the contact, the backspin trajectory, and the unresolved question of whether it would have stayed fair mean we can never know for certain what would have happened in an open-air stadium.