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Cade Smith was mere inches away from one of the scariest moments that could occur on a baseball diamond.
The Cleveland Guardians relief pitcher was on the bump in the bottom of the fifth of a 2-2 game in Seattle against the Mariners when Rowdy Tellez came up to bat.
Smith’s 88 mph breaking ball caught the lower half of the strike zone, and Tellez, one of the game’s harder hitters, barreled one up.
Tellez mashed a line drive that came directly back to where it had come from, coming off the bat at a scorching-hot 106.6 mph.
With essentially zero time to react, the ball hit the brim of Smith’s cap, with the right-hander narrowly escaping a serious injury.
With the cap breaking the speed of Tellez’s hit, it trickled into the outfield, and it was enough for him to reach second with a double.
Smith was completely unfazed, though, as he struck out the next batter to end the inning.
Seattle wound up scoring four runs in the seventh inning and taking home a 7-2 victory.
Tellez had a scorcher earlier in the game, mashing a homer with an exit velo of 107.3 mph. He has an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph, which ranks in the 80th percentile among qualified hitters.
Cleveland fell to 35-33 with the loss, a rather disappointing record up to this point, coming off an AL Central title. They now sit 9.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers.
The Mariners, meanwhile, are 4.5 games back of the Houston Astros in the AL West with their 34-34 record.
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