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.

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.

If you have some questions about this, well, you're not alone.

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?

More MLB on Sports Illustrated


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cal Raleigh Advanced Past Brent Rooker in Home Run Derby in Questionable Fashion.

Test hyperlink for boilerplate