MLB Highlights of the 13 Longest Home Runs of the 2024 Season

If it's still true that chicks dig the long ball, then cheep cheep, my farm friends, because we're bringing you a slight hiatus from the postseason madness in the form of the 13 biggest home run blasts of the 2024 regular season.

You might be wondering why we're going with 13 instead of, oh I don't know, a nice round number like 10.

Well, it's because there were precisely 13 home runs that traveled at least 470 feet this season.

It is a nice round 10 unique players, though.

So, consider this your warning that if you're fed up with hearing about Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge and were hoping to read something not involving them for a change, better luck next time.

The inevitable AL MVP hit three moonshots this season, while the inevitable NL MVP had a pair of them.

Home runs are presented in ascending order of distance traveled, culminating in a surprising winner that wasn't hit by Judge or Ohtani, nor at Coors Field.

Tale of the Tape : 470 feet off Cal Quantrill at Chicago's Guaranteed Rate Field on June 29 The Tape : Luis Robert Jr.'s 470-foot HR Fondly memorable moments were few and far between for the woebegone, 121-loss Chicago White Sox this season, but Robert did deliver a dynamite one in the sixth inning of what proved to be a rare third consecutive win for the South Siders.

To that point in the game, Quantrill had Robert's number.

He whiffed on a splitter in the first inning, struck out looking at a questionable call on a cutter in the fourth and flailed at a curveball in each of those ABs.

So, on the first pitch of the sixth inning, Quantrill threw him another Uncle Charlie.

Except this one was a cement mixer right in the heart of the strike zone.

The link above takes you to the White Sox crew's call of the home run, but toggle to the "AWAY Broadcast Video" for a comical "Uh oh" right as the ball is hitting the bat.

That thing was gone instantaneously, traveling 21 feet further than the next-closest home run hit by the White Sox this season (also by Robert).

Tale of the Tape : 470 feet off Zack Kelly at Boston's Fenway Park on July 26 The Tape : Aaron Judge's 470-foot HR Judge will make a total of three appearances on this list, but here's a fun fact: New York lost all three of those games.

The Yankees went 39-14 this season in games where Judge went yard, but 0-3 when he launched one at least 470 feet.

Weird.

This three-run, tape-measure shot to dead center off Zack Kelly did temporarily give the Yankees a 6-4 lead, but it ended up being undone by one of Clay Holmes' 13 blown saves.

To that point in the season, Kelly had been one of Boston's most reliable pitchers, entering the game with a 2.09 ERA.

And his cutter had been arguably his best pitch, with opponents going 5-for-27 with four singles, one home run and one walk against it .

Judge was all over that first-pitch offering that missed its mark by a mile, though.

Connor Wong wanted that thing low and away, but Kelly served it up on a platter to help Judge put an end to what had beenby his standards, at any ratea rough stretch of the season.

He had just three home runs in his previous 17 games, posting an .832 OPS for those three weeks, compared to 1.397 in May and 1.378 in June.

But that tank job at Fenway started one hell of a 27-game run (one-sixth of a full season) with 16 home runs and a 1.553 OPS.

Tale of the Tape : 471 feet off Austin Gomber at Colorado's Coors Field on August 8 The Tape : Pete Alonso's 471-foot HR No real surprise to find the Polar Bear on this list, right? Since making his MLB debut in 2019, Alonso has hit more home runs than everyone not named Aaron Judge.

(And is miles ahead of Judge if we're counting Home Run Derby swings.) He hadn't hit one at least 470 feet in more than five years, though.

Alonso destroyed one 489 feet in July 2019when the balls definitely weren't juiced at all before getting mighty comfortable in the 400-450 foot range for half a decade.

But when in Denver, do as the thin air allows you to do.

Gomber got out to a brutal start to this game, allowing back-to-back-to-back doubles before Alonso strode to the dish in the top of the first inning.

Francisco Lindor tattooed a well-placed knuckle curve, Jose Iglesias smoked a slider and J.D.

Martinez got a good piece of a changeup, leaving Gomber to question what in the world he could get to work.

Suffice it to say, the answer to his problems was not a slider with no slide at all.

Jacob Stallings wanted that pitch down and in, but it hung up right in Alonso's wheelhouse for a no-doubter and an immediate 4-0 Mets lead.

Fun fact: Alonso's second-longest home run of the season came two pitches later, when he launched a Gomber four-seamer 454 feet into the sparsely populated left-field seats.

Tale of the Tape : 471 feet off Isaiah Campbell at Boston's Fenway Park on June 24 The Tape : Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s 471-foot HR As with Pete Alonso, we've seen enough of Guerrero's Home Run Derby heroics over the years to almost expect him to be on this list.

He hit 91 home runs in the 2019 derby and 72 en route to winning it in 2023.

He didn't have any mammoth shots in last year's exhibition, maxing out at 456 feet, but he had 476-foot and 488-foot blasts back in 2019.

However, he had never gone 470+ in a game before destroying a hanging sweeper so ferociously over the DraftKings billboard above the Green Monster that it just about ended Isaiah Campbell's season.

The Red Sox reliever didn't immediately get sent back to Triple-A.

He did get to face one more batter, striking out Justin Turner on three pitches to end the inning.

But that was the last batter he faced in the majors this season.

And while it ended Campbell's year, it was kind of the beginning of Guerrero's second-half rampage.

He had hit just seven home runs in his first 74 games, entering that six-game road trip with a .394 slugging percentage for the season.

But over his final 85 games, he hit 23 dingers and slugged .672, trailing only Aaron Judge (.704) and Shohei Ohtani (.674) in that department.

Tale of the Tape : 472 feet off Brandon Pfaadt at Arizona's Chase Field on July 27 The Tape : Oneil Cruz's 472-foot HR You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who swings a bat harder than Oneil Cruz.

Pittsburgh's star shortstop barely played in 2023 after suffering a broken leg nine games into the campaign.

He also didn't get called up until mid-June of the previous season and has made just 1,000 plate appearances since the beginning of 2022.

During that three-year window, there have been a grand total of six balls hit in play with an exit velocity of greater than 120.0 MPH.

One was a 454-foot home run that Ronald Acuna Jr.

hit last September, teeing off on a "get me over" fastball on a 3-0 count.

Cruz was responsible for the other five.

Cruz also ranked second in average bat speed in 2024, trailing only noted big swinger Giancarlo Stanton in what was a newly tracked data point this season.

And among players with at least 150 batted ball events in 2024, Cruz's average home run distance of 422 feet was best in the majors, boasting seven that went at least 442 feet.

The exit velocity on this particular home run was *only* 115.5 MPH, but he sure did send it flying.

Not surprising, though, because fastballs up in the zone to Cruz are, definitively, poor decisions.

Per Statcast zones , he hit .400 on balls up and in this season, .458 on high strikes over the middle of the plate and .609 on belt-high strikes on the outer edge.

And Cruz jumped on Pfaadt's first pitch four seamer up and away as if he was wielding a sledgehammer up there.

Tale of the Tape : 473 feet off George Soriano at Miami's loanDepot Park on April 1 The Tape : Mike Trout's 473-foot HR Remember this guy, and the incredible start to the season he had? Injuries have derailed Trout's (still likely) Hall of Fame career, limiting the three-time AL MVP to just 266 out of a possible 648 games played over the past four seasons.

But before he tore the meniscus in his left knee in late Apriland tore it again a few months laterhe was threatening to do one of the few things he has never done: lead the league in home runs.

With 10 home runs in his first 25 games, Trout was leading the majors and on pace for 65.

Comparatively speaking, though, most of them didn't go all that far.

Of the other nine, Trout's max distance was 423 feet.

But the star who went 490 feet on his final plate appearance of the 2022 season did have one ball that he annihilated this season, unable to be fooled by Soriano on April Fool's Day.

Against just about any other hitter, it was actually a damn good pitch, at least compared to some of the meatballs we've seen thus far on this list.

Maybe Soriano would have liked to bury the slider a bit more than he did, but it was a borderline ball at the knees if Trout hadn't eviscerated it.

Unfortunately for Soriano, that area has always been Trout's wheelhouse .

Of his 40 home runs in 2022, 12 came on pitches pretty much exactly in that location.

Throughout his career, Trout's best marks in terms of barrels and exit velocity have come on those low pitches over the heart of the plate.

So even though we're talking about the beginning of April in a list otherwise almost exclusively full of taters that were mashed during the summer months, Trout got all of that one.

Tale of the Tape : 473 feet off Ryan Pressly at New York's Yankee Stadium on May 9 The Tape : Aaron Judge's 473-foot HR Judge didn't *struggle* against any pitch type this season, unless you want to count going 0-for-4 against the slurve, which few pitchers aside from Jose Berrios and Seth Lugo still have in their arsenal.

He was at least somewhat mortal against changeups, though, batting .229 with 19 strikeouts in his 48 at-bats that ended with that pitch.

Even so, he had six home runs against changeups, including this 3-1 mistake by Pressly.

For most of these mammoth home runs, the pitcher at least turns around to watch it fly, perhaps with some initial morsel of hope that it was just a loud 350-foot flyout and not one of the biggest blasts of the entire season.

But Pressly knew immediately.

So did Yainer Diaz, whose glove dropped to the ground before Judge had even finished his backswing.

What's comical is Pressly barely even missed his mark.

It was maybe two inches lower and two inches further inside than where Diaz set his target.

However, if you're going to miss to Judge, you need to miss up and/or away, not middle-in, where he demolishes everything.

Frankly, it was malpractice to ask for a pitch there in the first place.

In the entire 2024 season, Judge whiffed on just seven of 134 swings at pitches in that zone, resulting in 30 hits and eight home runs.

And it was a similar story in 2022 seven whiffs on 114 swings with 29 hits and nine home runsso "limited data early in the season" isn't an excuse here.

Pressly s simply served one up on a three-ball count with no one on base.

Tale of the Tape : 473 feet off Kutter Crawford at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium on July 21 The Tape : Shohei Ohtani's 473-foot HR This is the first of two appearances on this list for Shohei Ohtani, coming on one of his nine home runs this season that traveled at least 450 feet.

What else is new, though? While logging 166 IP with a 2.33 ERA, he also hit the longest home run of the 2023 season.

His 30th home run of that campaign went an absurd 493 feet .

This year's No.

30 was doggone impressive, too, sending a cutter from Kutter Crawford darn near out of Dodger Stadium altogether.

Balls were certainly carrying for that Sunday Night Baseball showdown with the Red Sox, with the two teams combining for seven home runs.

Five of them traveled fewer than 400 feet, though, with Freddie Freeman's 417-foot homer the only non-Ohtani exception to that rule.

But nothing came close to sounding like Ohtani's blast.

Crawford "led" the majors with 34 home runs allowed this season, 12 of which came via the cutter.

And given the way that one backed up right into the dead-center of the strike zone to maybe the greatest hitter alive, that checks out.

Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor and Corey Seager all homered off Kutter's cutter in 2024, as well, but 11 of the 12 were pulled and hit 410 feet or less.

Ohtani going 473 feet to right of center was ludicrous.

Tale of the Tape : 476 feet off Austin Gomber at Colorado's Coors Field on June 18 The Tape : Shohei Ohtani's 476-foot HR No, you're not seeing double.

We're just going straight from one Ohtani laser to another.

Colorado never would have been able to offer him $700 million, but could you imagine if Ohtani had signed with the Rockies? Between 2023-24, Ohtani played a total of 10 games at Coors Field, going 21-for-48 with five doubles, a triple and four home runs (and four walks and four stolen bases).

That's a .438 batting average and a 1.314 OPS.

Granted, he wouldn't have had the luxury of facing Rockies pitchers if he played for them, but baseballs still travel a long, long way in Denver, regardless of humidor usage.

All three of the home runs that he hit at Coors Field this season went at least 427 feet, as did the one he hit last year.

Only one of them really went into orbit, though.

Poor Austin Gomber makes his second appearance on this list, as he was also responsible for Pete Alonso's biggest blast.

But if you're going to hang an 84 MPH slider middle-in to Ohtani, you get what you deserve.

Every one of Ohtani's 'milestone' home runs this season was absurd, though.

No.

10 of the season went 464 feet to left-center.

This was No.

20.

No.

30 was the one we just discussed a minute ago.

No.

40 was the walk-off grand slam, putting him in the 40/40 club.

And he joined the 50/50 club on an oppo-boppo as part of that unreal 3 HR, 10 RBI, 2 SB day.

Tale of the Tape : 476 feet off Landon Knack at Colorado's Coors Field on Sept.

29 The Tape : Sam Hilliard's 476-foot HR We were originally considering doing this article with a couple days left in the regular season, but decided to push it back a week.

You know, just in case someone demolished a ball in Game 161 or 162, even though there hadn't been a 470+ foot home run hit since August 8.

Good thing we waited, because Sam Hilliard darn near landed at No.

1 last Sunday.

If you're sitting there saying "Sam who?" that's fair.

This is Hilliard's sixth season in the majors and he does have 42 home runs to his name, but he has never been a regular in the lineup, maxing out at 238 plate appearances in 2021.

This big blast didn't come out of nowhere, though.

Ten of Hilliard's previous 41 home runs traveled at least 440 feet.

And among players with at least 50 batted ball events in 2024, he tied with Giancarlo Stanton for the fifth-highest average exit velocity (94.6 MPH), behind only Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Oneil Cruz and Jerar Encarnacion.

He had never hit one quite this far before, though, going third deck on a 94 MPH fastball on a 2-0 pitch that Landon Knack might as well have put on a tee right in the heart of the strike zone.

With Charlie Blackmon retiring and Kris Bryant's availability permanently an unknown, maybe that one swing will be the catalyst that makes Hilliard an everyday staple in 2025.

Tale of the Tape : 477 feet off Kevin Gausman at New York's Yankee Stadium on August 2 The Tape : Aaron Judge's 477-foot HR Judge's first appearance on this list was a first-pitch home run, which he did 11 times this season.

But both his second appearance and this third one came on 3-1 pitches, where he was just outrageously lethal in 2024.

Per Baseball Reference , Judge went 10-for-16 with six home runs, three doubles and 35 walks on plate appearances that ended on the 3-1 pitch.

That's a .625/.882/1.938 triple slash for those keeping track at home.

And in case you're wondering how that compares to some of the other MVP-caliber players in 2024, Bobby Witt Jr.

went 3-for-13 with no home runs and 18 walks (.231/.677/.462), Shohei Ohtani went 2-for-8 with one home run and 23 walks (.250/.807/.625) and Francisco Lindor went 7-for-16 with no home runs and 17 walks (.438/.727/.625).

So, no, it's not normal to slug damn near 2.000 on 3-1 counts.

Even in Barry Bonds' 73-HR campaign in 2001, he went 14-for-29 with six home runs and 42 walks for a triple slash of .483/.789/1.276 that pales in comparison to what Judge did this season.

Gausman was one of the unfortunate souls who learned the hard way that you simply cannot give Judge anything to hit on 3-1.

And Gausman really gave him something to hit, grooving a four-seamer almost smack dab in the middle of the strike zone for Judge's 40th (and longest) home run of the season.

Tale of the Tape : 478 feet off Ryan Feltner at Colorado's Coors Field on July 21 The Tape : Jorge Soler's 478-foot HR After a mighty impressive 2023 campaign with the Marlins, Soler signed a three-year, $42M contract with the Giants in mid-February.

However, he was gone before the end of July, traded back to Atlanta where he played a key role for the 2021 World Series champions.

Shortly before leaving behind what was a mostly forgettable stint in the Bay Area, though, Soler did hit one leadoff home run in Denver that may or may not have landed yet.

This actually ended up being one of the better starts of Feltner's career, allowing two earned runs over seven innings of work.

But that first earned run came on the fourth pitch of the game on a sinker that never sank.

For what it's worth, it was the only home run that Soler hit on a ball in 2024 in that sector middle of the plate, bottom third of the strike zone.

He actually whiffed on 21 percent of swings on pitches there and had an average launch angle of just seven degrees, meaning lots of grounds balls and line drives.

This was quite the exception to the rule, though, tattooed to dead center and traveling 10 feet further than any other home run of Soler's career.

Fun fact: Because of this Soler laser, the 473-foot home run that Shohei Ohtani hit wasn't even the longest home run on July 21.

Tale of the Tape : 480 feet off Jakob Junis at Miami's loanDepot Park on August 5 The Tape : Jesus Sanchez 480-foot HR Unless you, for no particular reason, happen to remember this home run in a Marlins-Reds game in early August, how many guesses would it have taken you to come up with Jesus Sanchez as the player who clubbed the longest home run in 2024? At least 100, right? Even Marlins fans probably would've guessed corner infielder Jake Burger before their primary right fielder.

Sanchez did annihilate a 496-footer in 2022 off the pitcher we just mentioned a moment ago, Ryan Feltner.

That was the third-longest home run of that season, and he does have six career home runs that traveled at least 460 feet.

But he has never been any sort of hard-hit percentage or exit velocity hero, setting a new career high this season with a still modest 18 home runs.

Whatever, though.

He obliterated that Junis changeup that could not have been much more dead-center in the strike zone.

For the year, Sanchez hit .310 and slugged .603 against changeups .

He put up similar marks in 2022 (.290 and .613, respectively) and in 2021 (.308 and .654, respectively).

So, maybe don't hang any of those to this guy ever again, even in a 7-0 game with the bases empty..

This article has been shared from the original article on bleacherreport, here is the link to the original article.