This Colorado Rockies pitcher gave up 2021’s most irrelevant homer

There are plenty of ways to look back on the 2021 Major League Baseball season and the ways that the Colorado Rockies made headlines. This headline-making moment, however, takes a bit of a different turn.

As mentioned in this FOX Sports article, there were 5,944 home runs hit during the 2021 MLB season. The Colorado Rockies, by the way, hit 182 of those.

But this article isn’t about the ones that the Rockies hit. It’s about one home run given up by Colorado Rockies relief pitcher Yency Almonte on August 6, 2021, in a game at Coors Field against the Miami Marlins.

Here’s why this Colorado Rockies pitcher is linked to the most irrelevant home run of the 2021 MLB season

With the Rockies ahead of the Marlins that night 11-1, Almonte entered the game in the top of the eighth. The first batter he faced was Miguel Rojas, who took his 2-0 pitch over the left field fence.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, the home run didn’t matter to the outcome or the playoff chase. Colorado went on to win the game 14-2 and both the Rockies and Marlins would finish well out of the postseason race. Those are just some of the reasons why the home run was called the most irrelevant of 2021.

You can read more about the fascinating process for selecting the most irrelevant home run of 2021 and what other Miami-Colorado moment made the top 5 here.

The homer was part of a disastrous season for Almonte, who finished with a 7.55 ERA, the second-highest among all relievers (minimum 40 innings pitched) and the third-highest in franchise history (minimum 45 appearances) behind the 8.65 posted by Wade Davis in 2019 and Mike DeJean’s 8.41 mark in 1999.

Almonte, who made just six appearances for the Rockies from September 8 through the rest of the campaign, was outrighted to the minors on October 21 and elected free agency on November 7.