When Carl Pavano threw the primary official pitch on the model new Target Field on April 12, 2010, there was no Target brand on the mound. Mind you, there have been Target logos aplenty throughout the ballpark — on the wall behind dwelling plate, just under the press field, up above the bleachers in proper and middle subject, on the indicators the followers introduced and the hats they wore, and on the video boards on the façade of the higher deck, which regularly displayed rows of alternating baseballs and Target logos, tons of of them wrapping across the whole stadium — simply not on the pitcher’s mound. Later that 12 months, the interlocking T and C of the Twins brand started showing within the filth behind the rubber; the Target brand didn’t begin gracing the mound till 2016.

Still, within the early years of 2016 and 2017, the mound was typically utterly targetless. Even in the present day, there are video games the place there’s no brand by any means — and never simply nationally televised video games, when the promoting rights can change. Sometimes it’s simply the pitcher on their own up there (other than the rubber, the cleat cleaner, and a pair rosin luggage):

I don’t have any good guesses that specify the brand’s occasional absence, however I've so, so many dangerous guesses. Maybe the grounds crew is hiding the goal elsewhere on the sphere and we’re presupposed to be searching for it. Maybe Target leases the area on a per-game foundation, and typically whoever is in control of delivering that day’s test will get misplaced in the course of the half-mile stroll from Target Plaza Commons headquarters to Target Field. Maybe — and listen to me out on this one — perhaps the grounds crew simply will get busy typically. I don’t know why it’s not at all times there, but when it’s presupposed to be there each sport, I hope this paragraph doesn’t get anyone in bother.

Although issues are rather more constant in the present day, the brand nonetheless strikes round fairly a bit, and even adjustments coloration. It’s often positioned behind the rubber and off to the third base facet, painted a deep, German chocolate brown. But the colour has typically been lighter, particularly in the course of the 2020 season, and the placement varies each in longitude and latitude. Occasionally, the brand even exhibits up on the primary base facet of the mound:

For a very long time now, I've been watching Twins video games and asking myself two questions: Has anyone ever hit the goal? And is anyone even occupied with hitting the goal? After all, that’s what targets are for. Think of all these HIT IT HERE indicators that followers convey to the ballpark. Think of all these promotions the place anyone wins a prize if the batter hits the ball to a sure spot. The Twins actually have a goal positioned on essentially the most distinguished spot on the sphere. It beggars perception that no one’s preserving observe of whether or not or not somebody truly hits the bullseye, and but right here we're. It’s time to rectify this case. It’s time for an investigation.

Let’s begin with a thought train. Say we dropped a ball from an airplane and it landed on a very a random spot on Target Field. How probably would that ball be to hit the brand? I estimate that the brand is 26 inches, giving it an space of three.687 ft. Next, I took Baseball Savant’s diagram of Target Field and used Photoshop to measure the overall space of honest territory at 117,739.6 ft. By these estimates, the ball we dropped from the airplane would have a 0.003% probability of hitting the brand, or 1-in-31,934. That’s handy, as a result of between the common season and the playoffs, there have been 31,509 balls put in play at Target Field since 2016. If batted ball distribution have been utterly random, we might solely anticipate one ball — nicely, technically 0.99 balls — to have hit the Target brand over the previous eight seasons.

However, batted ball distribution isn’t random. The ball will get hit to some spots greater than others. That’s why the fielders carry these little positioning playing cards in all their nooks and crannies. Below is a twig chart and a warmth map of all of the batted balls the Twins hit at dwelling over the second half of the 2023 season (the most important pattern I may use with out breaking Baseball Savant):

The again of the mound isn’t utterly devoid of baseballs, but it surely’s not at all a scorching spot. Of the 31,509 balls in play at Target Field since 2016, Statcast lists simply 158 as hit straightaway with an estimated distance between 61 and 70 ft. That’s 0.5% of all batted balls, and we’re speaking about an space at the very least 100 instances larger than the world of the brand itself (relying on Statcast’s definition of straightaway). If something, it appears much less probably {that a} batted ball could be headed for that precise spot than one positioned on the sphere randomly, and that’s earlier than we issue within the slope of the mound.

That’s proper, the mound is sloped. Have you ever stopped to contemplate simply how bizarre it's that the mound exists in any respect? There’s this tiny little mountain in the midst of the sphere! No different workforce sport has a taking part in floor pocked with geological options, although I'd like to see a hockey sport at a rink with an enormous ice ramp so the gamers may do cool jumps in the midst of a breakaway.

The brand is positioned on the Eastern slope of Mount Target, which means that there’s no line of sight from the batter’s field. If you have been waging warfare on the batter, that’s precisely the place you’d dig in, as a result of it has nice cowl. It’s the one spot on the sphere that has defilade from dwelling plate. Unless you’re a mortar man, that makes the physics of truly hitting it extraordinarily tough. A ball hit straight on the brand would hit the highest of the mound after which bounce away:

In order to truly hit the brand, the ball must be hit exhausting sufficient to move over the plateau on the prime of the mound, however gentle sufficient that gravity has time to drag it all the way down to hit the downslope, which is far steeper than the slope on the entrance of the mound. That provides us a variety of launch angles and exit velocities to play with, from a excessive popup to a weakly hit line drive:

Let’s begin with weakly hit line drives, which have two problems. The first is that line drives are the balls least prone to be hit weakly, particularly once they’re hit again up the center. In 2023, the common line drive was hit 94 mph, in comparison with 92.1 for fly balls, 85.1 for popups, and 85 for groundballs. And balls which can be very weakly hit typically come on jam photographs and cue photographs, when the batter is both approach behind or in entrance of a pitch. When you’re approach in entrance or approach behind, your bat is at a reasonably excessive angle, making it much less probably that you just’ll direct the ball straight towards second base.

The second complication is rather more vital: There’s a pitcher standing proper there. He’s obtained a glove and all the pieces. Maybe you possibly can hit a rocket proper again up the center previous the pitcher, however a rocket would additionally zip proper previous the brand as a result of its trajectory wouldn’t dip sufficient after it made it previous the highest of the mound. That’s why we’re searching for weakly hit line drives, and weakly hit line drives usually get caught as a result of, once more, there’s a pitcher standing proper there:

That leaves us with popups. Let’s say that after he releases the pitch, our good friend Pablo López wants a second to regain his stability and doesn’t have time to backpedal and subject the ball. Or perhaps he decides to obey the arcane baseball legislation that claims no pitcher might ever try and catch a pop fly, lest he stumble off the mound and fall straight onto his pitching shoulder, rendering his arm unusable for the remainder of his life. Even if that occurs, the pitcher’s not the one particular person on the sphere. If the ball’s hit excessive sufficient to get previous him, that signifies that it’s probably hit excessive sufficient that there’s time for considered one of his work proximity associates to swoop in and make the play:

All of that is to say that it’s actually dang exhausting to hit the ball at that one precise spot. It would possibly even be the toughest spot on your entire subject. It sits at a clumsy place within the matrix of launch angle, spray angle, and exit velocity. And even in the event you do handle that 1-in-32,000 feat, you’re nearly definitely going to be foiled by the slope of the mound, or by a type of meddling fielders, who apparently don't have anything higher to do than run round and catch the baseball. But you realize what? Maybe anyone pulled it off anyway. That’s why they play the video games. I watched each a type of 158 batted balls hit straightaway at a distance of between 61 and 70 ft, after which I watched a complete lot extra.

First got here the balls that have been hit at a trajectory which may have despatched them proper on the brand. We’ll by no means know for certain whether or not they would have hit it, as a result of they hit the highest of the mound as a substitute and skipped on by. One profit to watching these performs one after one other is that the pitchers show to be extremely entertaining. The low liners kick up slightly plume of mud at their ft, they usually soar each which approach, typically so as to catch the ball and typically so as to get the hell out of the best way. It’s quite a bit like watching a cowboy film the place the dangerous man says, “Now dance!” and begins taking pictures on the good man’s ft:

Next got here the gentle line drives. In truth, I checked out hard-hit line drives too, watching each liner with an estimated distance as much as 100 ft. My pondering was that though these balls might need been hit too exhausting to land straight on the brand, they may have caught the pitcher abruptly and brought a lucky bounce off a glove or a physique half. But once more, no luck. As it seems, pitchers are shockingly good at both catching the ball or discovering different, extra painful methods to maintain it in entrance of them. However, for 4 years, Minnesota was dwelling to Luis Arraez, the world’s foremost purveyor of line drives hit simply exhausting sufficient to be helpful. If not for Shane Baz making a catch that he didn't appear in any respect sure about, Arraez actually might need taken dwelling the prize:

Last got here the popups. Surprisingly, there have been solely three that may have landed inside a number of ft of the brand. It actually is extraordinarily unusual to see a popup land proper behind the mound. However, the three that did find yourself within the neighborhood have been very tantalizing. The closest of them got here off the bat of Salvador Perez. If not for spectacular focus by Donovan Solano, who snagged the ball whereas concurrently absorbing a reduce block from first baseman Alex Kirilloff, the ball would have landed inside a yard of the brand. So shut, and but Solano:

Unfortunately, that’s it. Our investigation has come to an in depth, and I can definitively state that nobody has ever hit the Target goal. But I nonetheless have hope. I do know I simply advised you that no one has ever carried out this factor over the course of eight years and practically 32,000 balls in play, but it surely’s not unimaginable. A popup hit straight behind the pitching rubber constitutes actual bother, and it may simply trigger sufficient confusion to fall in, because it nearly did for Salvador Perez. And whereas it’s extraordinarily exhausting to hit a line drive that lands on the again of the mound, it’s not unimaginable. The slow-motion clips under present Kelvin Gutiérrez and Shohei Ohtani doing simply that. They additionally present Ramón Laureano and Jonathan Schoop hitting gentle liners that have been deflected by the pitcher and landed simply behind the rubber. These are all strategies by which some batter may sooner or later strike true.

And that’s not the one hope I convey you. At the start of this text, I posed two questions. The first was whether or not anybody has ever hit the goal, which proved to have a disappointing reply. The second was whether or not anybody is even pondering about hitting the goal. That reply is rather more enjoyable. After watching and rewatching an ungodly variety of popups and line drives, I can report that one particular person positively appears to be occupied with hitting the goal, and that’s Minnesota right-hander Joe Ryan:

Before Ryan begins an inning, particularly the primary inning, he often tosses at the very least one rosin bag towards the bullseye. I can’t show this subsequent half, however I don’t suppose he’s simply inserting them there. I feel he’s actively taking part in baseball cornhole. It occurs too typically to be a coincidence, and even when he misses, you possibly can typically see the marks from the place the rosin bag skidded throughout the filth:

Again, I can’t show that Joe Ryan is doing this deliberately — but. But you possibly can relaxation assured that I’ll be expecting it this season. I watched the primary pitch of a number of video games that he began in 2023, in addition to the beginnings of a number of later innings. Though the digital camera often exhibits a number of warmup pitches, it by no means sticks round to point out the pitcher making use of rosin and discarding the rosin bag. But in the event you scroll all the best way as much as the primary image on this article, you’ll see Joe Ryan standing on a mound with no brand on it. The rosin luggage are sitting in a tidy row beside the cleat cleaner. With no goal to launch them at, he didn’t appear to see the purpose in utilizing them in any respect.

Someday, somebody goes to hit the Target Field goal with a batted ball. When that day comes, we are going to rejoice and I'll write one thing foolish. In the meantime, we’ll simply should keep watch over Joe Ryan’s purpose.

Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com