Monday’s Home Run Derby at Denver’s Coors Field will be a star-studded affair featuring Angels phenom Shohei Ohtani, 2019 champ Pete Alonso and hometown hero Trevor Story, author of the longest home run of MLB’s current Statcast Era, which began in 2015. Often characterized as the ultimate hitter’s park, conditions at Coors Field, which sits 5,200 feet above sea level, couldn’t be more perfect with temperatures expected to reach 90.
The Derby has produced its share of monster homers over the years (particularly during the Steroid Era of the late 90s and early 2000s), but Monday’s mile-high showcase could top them all. It seems the Vegas sharps are expecting plenty of fireworks with Bovada establishing the over/under for longest homer of the night at 515.5 feet. That’s an ambitious distance but certainly not out of the realm of possibility given some of the entrants in this year’s field including Ohtani, who led all MLB sluggers with 33 homers in the first half.
“I think there will definitely be a ball hit close to 550 feet,” said former All-Star Matt Holliday, who spent six of his 15 major-league seasons in Colorado. “I think Ohtani has a chance to do that for sure.”
Ohtani, who has only logged six career at-bats at Coors Field (his lone hit was a single), launched a towering, 470-foot homer at Angel Stadium last month, easily the longest of his big-league career, though still 20 feet shorter than a ball Joey Gallo (who is also competing Monday night) demolished there years earlier. The longest home run in MLB this season belongs to White Sox DH Yermin Mercedes, who devoured Bryce Keller’s first-inning offering for a majestic, 485-foot blast at Guaranteed Rate Field back on April 8th.
For the longest Derby homer of the Statcast Era, you’d have to go back to 2017 in Miami when Yankees monstrosity Aaron Judge decided the laws of physics didn’t apply to him. That’s 513 feet of raw, masculine strength you're looking at.
When the Derby was last held at Coors in 1998—the year Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa ripped the record book to shreds—Ken Griffey Jr. pummeled a ball 510 feet, the longest drive of that year’s event, but not the longest in Derby history. Sosa smoked one a supposed 524 feet at Miller Park in 2002 while Frank Thomas dropped jaws with an epic 519-footer at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh eight years before that.
Holliday, who dinged one 498 feet off the left-field scoreboard at Coors in 2006, tried to convince his former Yankees teammate Judge to appear in this year’s Derby, but was obviously unsuccessful in that pursuit. “I tried to talk Judge into doing this one, just because I wanted to see how far he could hit it at Coors,” Holliday expressed to MLB.com’s Manny Randhawa.“I guess he’s not going to do it. But it’s a good group. I’m excited to watch those guys hit.”
The festivities begin at 8 PM ET on ESPN.
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