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As evidenced by Nelson Cruz's recent five-game streak with a home run, one thing is quite evident by the Mariners' slugger -- he can mash the living hell out of the ball.
Cruz was signed for one thing and one thing only this season -- to club home runs. So far, Cruz has lived up to that minimal standard with flying colors. Excluding the month of June, where Cruz apparently struggled to adapt to the heat of the summer like the rest of us, he has been bashing balls with little to no remorse.
Cruz is second according to ESPN's home run tracker for the "No Doubts", such as this one.
He has 31 home runs on the season so far. These 31 home runs have been hit on average 408 feet. That leads to a grand total of 12,648 feet in the air, or approximately 2.4 miles.
How far is that? In terms of the city of Seattle, it is pretty far. Nelson Cruz has cumulatively hit the ball into the Puget Sound (not that hard), but also Lake Washington, and looks to be about just one home run away from raining down on Lake Union.
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Cruz has hit the ball farther than the National Mall. He has hit the ball almost the length of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is about on par with the Daytona International Speedway and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Cruz has hit the ball approximately 35 football fields away.
He still has a while to catch up to the Grand Canyon. Cruz has only hit it the ball about 1/100th of that distance. And despite the fact it seems like he has hit quite a few moonshots, Cruz still has only hit about 1/100,000th of the distance to the moon.
It would take the average person approximately 5,000 steps and close to 47 minutes to trace the total distance of Cruz's bombs.
In the scope of monster home runs this season, however, Cruz has fallen a bit behind. Giancarlo Stanton leads the league in absolutely insane clobbered home runs, owning four of the six longest home runs this season, according to ESPN's home run tracker.
As the Mariners' season starts to dwindle a bit, we can take pride that Cruz has been an absolute blast to watch. Even that miserable June is slightly offset by his offensive prowess every other month. So here is to many more of these.