The only 2026 sluggers who can match MLB Home Run Derby's longest homers

The Home Run Derby is a celebration of the coolest play in sports, a glorious, spiritual experience to watch the ball fly through the air and gawk at its effervescent glory. But I ain’t got time for that; it’s time for math and science.

Home runs are, literally, rocket science. We’re talking about exit velocity and launch angle — there are seriously several real-life parallels between astrophysics and baseball. And none of them are more simply distilled than during the Home Run Derby, when we are launching a ball into the stratosphere as many times as humanly possible. 

But we also care about how far we launch it, and it should come as no surprise that the homers hit in the Derby are longer than any that have been hit in an actual game.

The longest homers in Home Run Derby history

The longest Derby homer ever was Juan Soto's 520-foot blast in the 2021 Home Run Derby, but that ball had the benefit of the Coors Field mile-high air in Colorado; in case you didn’t know, baseballs soar through that dry air, and most of the longest home runs of the Statcast Era have happened there. The non-Coors Field record belongs to Aaron Judge in 2017 and Oneil Cruz in 2025, both cranking 513-foot homers at their respective Derbies.

We’re not going to break Soto’s Coors-enhanced 520-burger, so do any of our 2026 sluggers have a chance to break this 513-foot record? Let’s find out! Housto—er, Philadelphia, we have liftoff. 

The blueprint: 2025 Oneil Cruz and 2017 Aaron Judge 

OK, so to start launch calculations, we need to figure out how much exit velocity we require. And we actually have a remarkably consistent model for this: Cruz and Judge’s 513-footers both were hit 118 mph and had launch angles of 31 and 35 degrees, respectively. Both Judge and Cruz also led MLB in average exit velocity in that year, at or just above 95 mph. Weirdly, average home run distance doesn’t really correlate to Derby distance, but I do care about bat speed, so let’s add it in: I don’t have bat-speed numbers for Judge in 2017, but if we assume his 2023 number is basically fine that puts him at 76.5 mph. Cruz in 2025 brought an insane average bat speed of 78.8 mph. This is what we need to bring to the table to beat the 513-foot mark.

The Contenders: How every derby contestant stacks up with Judge and Cruz

Not to spoil anything too much, but no hitter other than Cruz himself brings the combination of power and speed likely to produce what we need. Unless Nationals star James Wood decides to walk through that door, the average exit velocities and bat speeds are going to leave something to be desired. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have something to work with. Here’s how everyone stacks up:

Two hitters jump out: Jordan Walker and Junior Caminero, both of whom are bringing ridiculous bat speeds to the party that are liable to produce supreme distances in the Derby. Caminero, though, has a much flatter swing than Walker and thus doesn’t get as much pure distance out of his bat. Everyone else lacks the underlying statistics to get these ridiculous distances, so Walker is probably our guy.

Jordan Walker is our likeliest 513+ home run hitter

Walker has hit a ball 117.9 mph before, back in 2025, but he's actually jacked up his bat speed since then — which means we can expect some crazy things coming soon to an upper deck near you. No one else really profiles as the type of distance monster required to get baseballs to the Cruz/Judge zone. Walker is the man for the job.

One note on weather: We’re doing basic astrophysics here (I was a history major, so this is hard for me), not meteorology, and I’m not really here to talk air density and relative humidity. But the forecast shows hot and 52 percent humidity for Monday in Philly. That’s actually a tiny bit lower than the humidity was in Atlanta when Cruz hit his 513-foot blast. I think that’s good for our chances. Let's go Jordan Walker!

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