How far could a home run fly at 2021 MLB Home Run Derby at Coors Field?
Its a simple question with a muddied answer. The more you dig, the dirtier it gets. The man with the best chance of answering that inquiry is Alan Nathan. The University of Illinois professor of physics has spent years researching the collision between the bat and ball and the aerodynamics of a baseball in flight  the two main parts of the recipe in figuring out how far a ball can fly. While 500-foot blasts are a rarity in the regular season with only two being hit in all of baseball since opening day in 2015, hes already expecting several to be hit during the 2021 MLB Home Run Derby at Coors Field. During the Home Run Derby, there will probably be a number of shots over 500 feet, certainly many close to 500 feet is my guess, Nathan said. Nathan has used his expertise and interests to bring new understanding to the sport. One tool in his arsenal is MLBs Statcast software introduced in 2015. Its a high-speed, accurate instrument that automatically captures and generates reams of data every game on every play. Meaning, with complex algorithms and less guesswork, theres now a reasonably accurate way to measure moon shots and what creates them. The precision is essential for Denver. Despite it being known for thin air and rocketed round-trippers, theres not a definitive stat for the longest dinger in the history of Coors Field. Denver does have a record for it, but the mark is not as cut and dry as one might expect. Currently, Giancarlo Stantons 504-foot colossus from 2016 stands as the verified Coors Field record. But for a brief period, the longest LoDo dinger was thought to belong to Trevor Story, who hit a homer in 2018 that was initially estimated at 505 feet before official measurements recalculated it at 487. Two decades before that, Mike Piazza hit a home run off Darren Holmes in 1997 many say traveled well over 500 feet. The Rockies estimated it at 496 feet, but evidence suggests they manipulated the numbers on the Hall of Famers shot. Stantons Coors Field mark is just one foot shy of the Statcast-Era-long of 505 feet hit by Nomar Mazar at Globe Life Park in 2019. But the longest dinger in Denver history might be the biggest bash of all-time. I jumped up in the dugout, and that little button on top of your hat, I remember it embedding in my head because I hit my head on the ceiling of the dugout, Mark Knudson, former Denver Zephyrs and eight-year MLB pitcher, said. I remember the pain of that button driving into my head because I was so amazed to see what we just saw.  Knudson was talking about teammate Joey Meyers gargantuan 582-foot homer at Mile High Stadium in 1987. We didnt have Statcast, that kind of stuff, but we actually had a surveyor go out there and measure it, Knudson recalls. Because we knew the game was on television, they could identify the seat that it hit. So thats why they made the seat a different color. Just to signify it, and thats how they could measure it.  Nearly every year during the home run derby, a blast or two will top 500 feet. Coors Fields altitude will increase those numbers thanks to its thinner air creating less drag on the ball. That was a major component of the Meyer home run. Nathan notes that a perfectly squared-up ball will be hit at about a 30-degree launch angle off of the barrel with an exit velocity of 100 mph. At those marks, the ball travels about 25 feet farther in Denver than at sea level. Most of my experience thinking about these things is at sea level and its hard to come up with the power to imagine someone hitting it much greater than 500 feet without the aid of either having low air density, which is the Coors Field effect, or an outflowing wind, Nathan says. A key factor many overlook when talking about altitude is that Denver can often have strong breezes on summer afternoons. A stiff wind of just 20 mph could add as much as 80 feet to a shot, which is how Nathan explains Mickey Mantles 565-foot home run at Washington, D.C.s Griffith Stadium in 1953. In Major League Baseball, they pretty much topped out at about 120 miles an hour for exit velocity, and thats pretty rare. Nathan said. If you take that as an upper limit and you add a 30-degree launch angle, you come up with something around 500 feet. And thats got to be pretty close to the maximum. Its hard to see how that could happen, except if its either aided by the wind or low air density like you have in Denver.  Theres one more factor that significantly affects how far a home run could be hit, and its been displayed in Colorado  the bounciness of the ball. In 2002 the Rockies introduced a humidor to store the balls at Coors Field, effectively making them mushier. For the years Nathan tracked the change, 25% fewer home runs were hit at Coors Field after the humidor was installed. Any baseball hit thats significantly greater than 500 feet has to be aided by something a lot, either aided by an especially bouncing ball, wind, low air density, or a combination of all those.  If MLB wanted to get wild, they could use non-humidor-stored balls. And maybe thats what it will take to not only top Mark McGwires 510 foot Home Run Derby jolt in 1998 that hit the faade of the Rockpile, but go much, much farther.