Soler’s thunderbolt grand slam

Jorge Soler came up in the eighth inning Friday night with the Angels leading the Reds 3-1, two outs on the board, and every base occupied. One swing later, Los Angeles was up 10-1. (mlb.com) The pitch was a 98.0 mile-per-hour four-seam fastball from Cincinnati reliever Nicolas Rojas. Soler hit it 110.4 miles per hour off the bat at a 26-degree launch angle, and Statcast measured it at 417 feet to left-center field. (mlb.com) A grand slam is the fastest way to turn a close game into a rout because it scores four runs on one pitch. Soler’s homer added more runs in one instant than the Angels had scored in the first seven innings combined. (mlb.com) The setting mattered too: this was at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati on April 10, 2026, in the opener of an Angels-Reds series. ESPN’s box score shows Los Angeles finishing with a 10-1 win after that eighth-inning burst. (espn.com) Soler is 34 now, and this kind of swing is why teams keep betting on his power even when the rest of his game runs hot and cold. Baseball Savant lists him at 6-foot-3, 235 pounds, with 206 career home runs entering Saturday and a 2026 slugging percentage of.468. (baseballsavant.mlb.com) That all-or-nothing profile has been visible all week. Two days before this homer, Soler was in the middle of a benches-clearing fight against Atlanta after a high inside pitch from Reynaldo López, and ESPN reported he had already homered earlier in that game too. (espn.com) By Saturday morning, ESPN’s season page had Soler with 3 home runs and 11 runs batted in through his first 13 games of 2026. Friday’s swing did not just pad those totals; it turned one plate appearance with the bases loaded into four runs and pushed the Angels back toward.500. (espn.com) The cleanest way to read the moment is through the numbers on the swing itself. A 110.4 mile-per-hour exit velocity is the kind of contact that leaves fielders frozen, and on Friday it left Cincinnati with a seven-run hole before the inning was over. (mlb.com)