Aaron Judge Defied Laws of Physics by Hitting Marlins Park Roof in HR Derby

Not even NASA scientists have the formula to properly gauge Aaron Judge's power.

 The New York Yankees star won Monday night's Home Run Derby with stunning feats of strength. He hit 47 home runs—four of which traveled more than 500 feet—but did not receive credit for a towering shot that struck the Marlins Park roof.

According to Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, the Miami Marlins went to great lengths to make sure the stadium's retractable roof wouldn't interfere with any batted balls:

"Back when the engineers from Thomas P Moore were designing the retractable roof of Marlins Park they set out to determine how high the roof would have to be so as not to interfere with balls in play. They studied the air density and temperatures of Miami and plugged those variables into equations from NASA. Then they wrote an algorithm “to generate a volumetric approximation of all the possible batted ball flight paths” and then applied it to their Building Information Modeling to determine the final geometry of the roof structure.

The engineers finally arrived at a height of 210 feet above the ground at its apex (above second base) to make sure no batted ball hit the roof. It tapered to a low of 128 feet above the ground in deep right-centerfield."

As Verducci further explained, the Marlins still needed to file an official rule for how the stadium would treat such a scenario. Viewing it as a mere formality, they labeled any ball hitting the roof in fair territory a live ball rather than a home run.

That technicality nearly cost Judge on Monday night. Although ESPN's broadcast counted his moonshot as a home run, the officials did not. The Yankees slugger broke the first-round tie with Justin Bour on his final swing with seconds remaining.

Nobody had ever hit the ballpark's roof until Judge did it twice in one day. SportsCenter's Twitter page documented a baseball's destruction during Monday's batting practice before the contest.

It seems NASA's algorithms capping man's limits will need some tinkering to account for Judge's unprecedented power.

[Sports Illustrated]