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Watch NL Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant club a 495-foot homer

Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant won the 2015 NL Rookie of the Year Award on Monday, surprising no one. The 23-year-old slugger raked at every level of the minor leagues in 2013 and 2014, then raked so hard in spring training it became a whole thing, then raked in the Majors to the tune of a .275/.369/.488 line with 26 homers in his first season. The guy can rake.

In the above video, Bryant hits the longest home run of the 2015 season, according to Statcast. The moonshot would have traveled a projected 495.3 feet if it weren’t for that pesky scoreboard.

As for that whole spring-training thing: Bryant hit so well in Cactus League play that some argued it’d be foolish for the Cubs, with designs on contention, to send him back to Class AAA Iowa for the start of the season. But not only did the Cubs reach the NLCS anyway — even after costing themselves a week’s worth of Bryant’s services — but demoting Bryant to start the season ensured they will have him under team control for a whole extra season on the back end of his arbitration years.

The Cubs are going to be able to hit Bryant, Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo back-to-back-to-back, in some order or another, until 2021 — by which point Rizzo, the oldest in the group, will still only be 32. That’s insane, y’all.

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