Luis Lara’s first career homer pays homage to former Brewers outfielder now playing for the Cubs

Luis Lara is not a power hitter. The 21-year-old rookie is already proving his maturity at the plate with an advanced feel for the game (especially in the outfield), but home runs are just never going to be a big part of his production, considering he stands at 5'7".

Thus, it's none too surprising that it took him about 100 trips to the plate in the major leagues for him to secure the first round-tripper of his career. That he did it as part of the Milwaukee Brewers' 22-0 slaughtering of the Seattle Mariners was poetic, as the entire lineup got in on the fun in the franchise's most lopsided win ever.

Some more fun history to come out of that moment: Lara became just the second player in Brewers history to hit his first career home run off a fellow position player, smacking a 37-mph eephus from Leo Rivas over the left field wall in American Family Field.

He joins Tyrone Taylor in that hitter-on-hitter-crime club; the current Chicago Cubs outfielder blasted his first career homer back in September of 2020 against Travis Demeritte of the Detroit Tigers.

Luis Lara's first career homer counts the same as all others, even if it came against a position player

There has been some discussion about whether or not Lara's home run actually "counts," since it came against a position player throwing rainbows below 40 miles per hour. Technically, of course, it will live forever on his stat sheet, but some fans have claimed that it's not the same as taking a real big-league pitcher deep.

Though getting an eephus that slow probably reduces the degree of difficulty quite a bit, there was nothing cheap about Lara's homer; he hit the ball at a near-perfect launch angle of 30°, and it exited his bat at 98.1 mph (which is hard to do against a pitch that slow!). That resulted in a 372-foot fly ball that cleared the left field wall with room to spare.

Semantics aside, this is a memory Lara will have forever. He's sure to hit a few more homers with the Brewers before all is said and done -- he had 19 in 469 career minor-league games -- but there's nothing like rounding the bases in the big leagues for the first time. And, hey, he now has half as many home runs as the guy he took deep (Leo Rivas has two MLB homers in 134 games).

So long as he turns in the long, productive career that the Brewers' front office expects him to, it will eventually just be a footnote that his first career home run came against a position player.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow