Bradley Zimmer, Tyler O’Neill Shine At AFL Bowman Hitting Challenge

Bradley Zimmer (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—Set against the resplendent background of Salt River Fields, the Arizona Fall League season kicked off its season on Saturday night with the fourth annual Bowman Hitting Challenge.

A home run derby with a twist, the hitting challenge gathers one player from each of the 30 clubs and asks them to rack up as many points as possible in two minutes by hitting a series of bizarre targets set up across the field.

Among the targets are: stand-up ads for Bowman baseball cards, interns in giant hamster balls, bucket pyramids and a roving golf cart equipped with a bull’s-eye. This year also featured a pair of gigantic inflatables—a dinosaur in left field and a bald eagle in right field—down each line.

This year’s winner was Bradley Zimmer, an Indians outfielder who hit .273/.368/.446 with 16 home runs this season between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus and ranked No. 14 among Eastern League prospects.

“Honestly, I was just trying to treat it like a home run derby and hit everything out to center field,” Zimmer said. “If I missed, hopefully it’d hit a target out there somewhere.”

Also among the participants were Red Sox infielder Yoan Moncada—Baseball America’s newly crowned Minor League Player of the Year—Cubs outfielder Eloy Jimenez, Dodgers outfielder Alex Verdugo, Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader and Brewers infielder Isan Diaz.

Nearly every player put on a decent power display, but some were truly awe-inspring. Zack Collins, for example, hit five home runs in a span of eight swings. Twins catcher Mitch Garver hit one of the two pink balloons suspended high above the left- and right-center field alleyways. For this, he was awarded 700 points.

But the most incredible power stroke came from Mariners outfielder Tyler O’Neill. After wowing the crowd at in San Diego at this year’s Futures Game, the sinewy Canadian dropped jaws at Salt River Field with his final swing of the evening.

After each round, every player gets to put a ball on a tee and take aim at a specific target. O’Neill wanted to leave the yard.

“Last year, I put the ball off the wall off the tee,” he said. “So I knew I was able to put it out if I got enough of it if I put it down the line a little bit more, but I actually put it in the same spot. I just got a little bit more this time.”

O’Neill’s shot was a laser that just cleared the fence in left-center field, which is 390 feet. His blast probably landed close to 400 feet away, and it started off a tee.

He was so sure he got it all, in fact, that he emphatically flipped his bat to punctuate the moment. And if that weren’t enough, he found a picture of the bat flip, tweeted it, and made sure to mention Jose Bautista, the game’s resident bat-flipping artist.

A HR off the tee calls for a @toneill21 bat flip?? pic.twitter.com/4QB9kGcmFH

— Modesto Nuts (@ModestoNuts) October 9, 2016

“When you feel a ball off the bat like that … you know,” he said. “I had a hunch that it was going to go over, I was just glad it did.”