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Did this White Sox pitching prospect really just throw 110 mph?

Michael Kopech. (via MLB.com)
Michael Kopech, probably not throwing 110 mph. (via MLB.com)

It’s not quite time for spring training yet, but we’re getting close. That means baseball players are starting to get themselves in shape to return to the game we all love (and miss) so much. Soon we’ll be getting tweets and Instagram posts of players saying and showing that they’re in the best shape of their life.

One Chicago White Sox prospect has gotten a jump on all of that, though.Michael Kopech was captured in a tweet Tuesday throwing one heck of a pitch. Kopech is the pitcher who came to the White Sox from the Boston Red Sox in the Chris Sale trade. Take a look at what the number on the radar gun says after he throws.

Your eyes didn’t deceive you. The radar gun actually says Kopech’s pitch hit 110 mph. That’s insanely fast, faster than Aroldis Chapman, and four miles faster than anyone at any position threw any baseball in the entire 2016 season.

But that number isn’t quite what it seems. Let’s talk about why that 110 mph isn’t actually 110 mph in a baseball sense.

  • Kopech was throwing off of flat ground and not a mound, which impacts the speed (and of course the trajectory) of a baseball.

  • He wasn’t throwing at anything specifically, the ball was just going into a net and had no particular location, like a catcher’s mitt.

  • The net he was throwing at was significantly less than 60 feet, 6 inches in front of him, which is the distance between the mound and home plate. The net looked to be 10-20 feet in front of him.

  • Kopech had some serious wind-up before that 110 mph pitch. He pretty much got a running start before he let the ball go, which would give the pitch more momentum.

So that 110 mph pitch had a lot of help getting to 110 mph, and Kopech most likely wouldn’t be able to replicate that on a mound during a game. I know that it feels like a letdown. But here are some positives! Michael Kopech can clearly throw very hard, and he’s doing it on Jan. 17, a full month before pitchers and catchers are expected to report. And just because he probably won’t be able to throw 110 in a game doesn’t mean he’s not talented — both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus had Kopech in their top 100 prospects list prior to the 2016 season.

MLB Pipeline has Kopech’s fastball range listed as 96-98 mph, but after returning from a broken hand (which he apparently broke in a fight with a teammate during spring training in 2016), he reportedly touched 105 mph with his fastball.

So the real excitement is imagining if he can sustain that, or even improve on it. Spring training starts in just 26 days, so if we can hold on without baseball just a bit longer, we may be able to find out.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher