Cal Raleigh is the current home run king of Major League Baseball. He hit 38 home runs before the All-Star break which is more than anyone else in baseball, including Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and everyone else.
Raleigh then went out and hit 17 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby, which was good enough to tie for fourth place with Brent Rooker of the Athletics. Rather than go to a swing-off to determine who would move on, MLB advanced the player with the longer home run.
The only problem is that both guys hit their longest home runs 470 feet.
And the only solution was MLB claiming they knew how far all these home runs traveled down to an insanely precise decimal point.
Big Dumper's longest home run edged Brent Rooker's longest out by one inch to win the tiebreaker and advance to the Derby semifinals pic.twitter.com/n3fP3yxIfr
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) July 15, 2025
The official determination was that Raleigh's longest home run traveled .08 feet—or 61/64ths of an inch—further than Rooker's longest dinger.
If that doesn't seem made up enough for you, check out this tweet from MLB where they claim to know the distance of the home runs down to the 10-billionth(?) place(!?). That's how exact we're supposed to believe MLB is measuring these home runs that leave the stadium or land in a mass of fans.
Cal Raleigh advanced by LESS THAN 0.1 FEET 🤯 pic.twitter.com/Xu3BptW9Ej
— MLB (@MLB) July 15, 2025
Cal Raleigh beat Brent Rooker to advance to the next round in the HR Derby by INCHES 🤯🤏 pic.twitter.com/PSEEdibx0b
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 15, 2025
If you have some questions about this, well, you're not alone.
You’re trying to tell me Brent Rooker was beat by less than a foot? LESS THAN A FOOT?!?! But sure… we can’t figure out the damn strike ZONE & THE NFL CANT FIGURE OUT A CATCH & THE NBA CANT FIGURE OUT WHAT A TRAVEL IS-THE WNTIRE WORLD IS A LIE! pic.twitter.com/jRMZrQgJlH
— Dallas Braden (@DALLASBRADEN209) July 15, 2025
Or, to paraphrase another prodigious power hitter, do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see Cal Raleigh sock a few dingers?
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cal Raleigh Advanced Past Brent Rooker in Home Run Derby in Questionable Fashion.
