Why Lazaro Montes’ 474-foot blast is Mariners most impressive HR ever

There has always been curiosity around just how far Lazaro Montes could hit a home run at T-Mobile Park once he arrived to the big leagues with the Seattle Mariners.

It took exactly one home run at Seattle’s ballpark to find out. And the answer is farther than anyone has hit one there before.

Seattle Mariners’ Lazaro Montes hits longest HR in T-Mobile Park history

On Tuesday night, Montes lifted off into outer space, obliterating a center-cut 95 mph fastball from Texas Rangers pitcher Cal Quantrill to completely clear the “J-Rod Squad” section beyond the wall in right-center field. The three-run blast traveled an estimated 474 feet, which is a record for T-Mobile Park in the Statcast era, which dates back to the 2015 season.

It was just the sixth game in the big leagues and fifth in Seattle for the 6-foot-5 Montes, who is the No. 56 prospect in baseball per MLB Pipeline.

There is one other homer in M’s history that traveled farther than Montes’ did on Tuesday night. But was it more impressive? Probably not.

Let’s take a closer look at Montes’ homer, and the other big ones in Mariners and T-Mobile Park history.

Most impressive Mariners homer ever?

Though Montes’ homer was the longest ever at T-Mobile Park, it ranks second in M’s history in terms of distance. Jarred Kelenic holds the Statcast-era record for longest home run by a Mariners player, which was a 482-foot moonshot on April 12, 2023 against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

As incredible as that swing was, the homer that landed in the cheap seats way beyond center field was aided by some serious wind – 19 mph out to center – in the Windy City. That explains why the exit velocity of the Kelenic homer was “just” 111.7 mph, compared to the 116.1 mph that Montes generated on his homer Tuesday night.

Montes may have received a bit of a boost from the wind as well, which was at 10 mph from left field to right field, but he had to cut through some colder air than Kelenic did. Kelenic’s homer came in a day game where the temperature was 77 degrees at first pitch. The temperature for Tuesday’s game in Seattle was 71 degrees at the 6:40 p.m. first pitch, so it had actually dropped into the mid-60s by the time Montes came to the plate in the bottom of the fourth inning.

The previous record holder

Before Tuesday, the record for the longest home run in T-Mobile Park history in the Statcast era belonged to former Mariners catcher Mike Zunino.

On June 29, 2018, Zunino dug into a middle-in 93 mph fastball and drove it to the second-to-last row in the left field bleachers. While initially estimated at 454 feet with a 116 mph exit velocity, it was later revised to 470 feet.

What about the derby?

Montes’ homer stands at the farthest hit in a game at T-Mobile Park, but the stadium has hosted the MLB Home Run Derby a couple of times in the past, and each had one player hit a ball that was estimated as going slightly farther.

In 2023, Luis Robert – then of the Chicago White Sox, now of the Baltimore Orioles – had the longest homer in the derby at an estimated 484 feet to the bleachers above the Mariners’ bullpen in left-center field.

Back in 2001 – so 14 years prior to the Statcast era – Barry Bonds hit one that made it to the first row of the upper deck in right field that was estimated at 476 feet. We might need to take that estimate with a grain of salt, because a few other people have made it deeper into the upper deck in the Statcast era with shorter estimated distances, including Shohei Ohtani (463 feet) and Luke Raley (459 feet).

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