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Mervis hit the most homers in the second round with 11, but he fell short with a combined score of 19. Jhailyn Ortiz only connected on two dingers to end up with 11 and Stephen Scott clubbed four to finish with 10. The winner received a check for $2,000 and was invited back for the next week's episode against a new opponent ; the runner-up received a check for $1,000. If a batter hit three home runs in a row, he would receive a $500 bonus check. A fourth home run in a row would be worth another $500 bonus check.
The future Hall of Famer hit 13 home runs in his turn – 10 and then three more during bonus time – which very much felt like it wouldn't be enough. Schwarber, however, was unable to find any kind of lasting groove, and he, too, landed on 13. Rodríguez had a bit of a coming out party before running into Soto in the finals. Alonso had won the event in 2019 and and was looking to become the first player ever to win three Derbies in a row. Eight players representing eight big league systems and each of the six AFL teams are set to compete in the three-round bashfest. After Round 1 of the Fall League Derby, Seattle's Robert Perez Jr. topped the pack with 13 dingers.
Home Run Derby
Some players wore golf gloves during the show—a notable addition because the batting glove was still years away from being a normal part of a player's gear. Once again, Mancini looked comfortable, drilling eight homers in the first minute, including a 490-foot drive that secured one minute of bonus time. He would go on to add shots of 485, 488, 481 and 475 while reaching 16 in regulation. Mancini started hot in bonus time and while he hit a rut in the final 40 seconds or so, one final blast at the buzzer got him to 22. Soto started hot, hitting five homers in his first seven swings, including two of 440 feet or longer.
The Phillies slugger wasted no time chipping into that, hitting seven homers before taking his timeout. He was slow out of the gate after the break, adding only three before his minute of bonus time. Schwarber didn’t hit his first homer in bonus time until the halfway point, but added three in the final 30 seconds to force a one-minute tiebreaker. He finished regulation with 17 homers and easily earned a minute of bonus time with four 475-plus foot clouts. Alonso took care of the remaining dingers in short order, homering on all six of his bonus-time swings to put his second straight Home Run Derby title on ice. The man to beat in the competition, Alonso started his quest for a three-peat against an intradivision rival in Acuña, who hit 19 home runs.
T-Mobile Home Run Derby
He had 10 before taking his timeout, putting himself in a great position to advance. He walked it off with his 18th blast just seconds before the end of regulation. As fatigue started to set in for the sluggers in the second round, first-round leaders Kjerstad and Perez Jr. kept up their respective paces to advance to the final round -- Kjerstad with 22 and Perez Jr. with 21.
Soto quickly got the four he needed to lift the crown, tossing his bat after winning the 2022 T-Mobile Home Run Derby. At 23 years, 266 days old, Soto won just one day short of tying Juan González as the youngest winner in Derby history. The top seed in the tournament, Schwarber faced off against Pujols, who has 685 homers to his name. The 42-year-old Pujols opened with 13 dingers, giving Schwarber a decent-size hill to climb.
MLB Home Run Derby results, takeaways: Juan Soto beats Julio Rodríguez for crown; Pete Alonso falls short
Alonso also missed the chance to join Ken Griffey Jr. as the only three-time Derby winners. This marked Pujols' fifth career Derby appearance, and with the stunner over Schwarber he became the first player ever to advance past the first round on five occasions. Rodríguez, the AL Rookie of the Year frontrunner at the break, is just 21 years and 100 days old. That makes him the third-youngest player every to make a Derby final.
Alonso made this look positively easy through the first two rounds, and set himself up for a shot at back-to-back Derby titles in the final against Mancini. As best I can tell, there have only been four 30-homer rounds in Home Run Derby history, and Julio has two tonight (Vlad Jr. and Joc Pederson have the other two). Nineteen players, including nine future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, participated in the series — "almost all the power hitters of the era."
Juan Soto survived and advanced
There were also umpires along both foul lines to help judge fly balls that were close calls. He went deep six times in extras, going 503 and 505 feet on the last two fence-clearers, but that stillwasn’t enough; he and Soto were tied at 28 homers, and a three-swing swing-off was needed. After Soto went deep on all three of his swings, Ohtani caught his breath and stepped back in one last time. He couldn't get his first swing over the fence, though, and just like that … his night was over.
With the second-most homers in any round by a rookie in Derby history. Swinging a black bat with his nickname "J-Rod" plastered all over it in Mariners green, Rodríguez crushed a 463-foot shot to left-center at Dodger Stadium for the first home run of the Derby. J-Rod heated up fast in his first Home Run Derby, crushing 14 home runs before calling timeout just over halfway through his round -- then adding 11 more to take his total to 25 before bonus time. Seven more home runs in bonus time earned Rodríguez a standing ovation from the Dodger Stadium crowd. As the higher seed, Soto got to sit back and watch Rodríguez set the mark to beat with 18 homers, one more than José Ramírez posted against him in the first round. Soto started slow again, not hitting a homer until 45 seconds in, but then found another level with 10 homers in a span of 12 swings before taking his timeout.
He couldn’t overcome the deficit, though, ending with 24 home runs. He also took until the seventh inning to hit his first home run, the longest such drought in a contest, and just surpassing Snider, who hit a home run off the trees in the sixth inning of his contest vs. Aaron. Triandos was nonetheless good-natured, treating his futility with a mix of self-deprecation and humorous sarcasm, and wishing Dick Stuart luck after their competition. After Ohtani tied him, he hit six more homers in a one-minute tiebreaker, including a 500-footer, to put the pressure back on Ohtani -- who proceeded to tie things up again. That led to another swing-off, this one featuring three swings for each guy. Soto was perfect, going three-for-three, including a 506-foot blast.
LOS ANGELES -- There was no three-Pete in the T-Mobile Home Run Derby. Pete Alonso’s bid to become the first slugger to win three straight Derby titles came up short Monday night at Dodger Stadium, as the Mets' first baseman was ousted in the semifinals by Julio Rodríguez, the Mariners’... In all rounds, the clock starts ticking with the release of the first pitch. Home runs will count so long as the pitch they were hit on was released before the clock hit zero. Jensen was the only player to hit four and subsequently five home runs in a row, doing so in the fourth inning of the final episode.
Any consecutive home runs hit beyond that would each be worth $1,000. Each show would end with the host presenting each player with their prize checks , and would award separate checks for consecutive home run bonuses. These were actual bank checks, not the jumbo "display" checks typically used today. For example, if the winner hit three homers in a row, they would receive one check for $2,000 and another for $500 instead of one check for $2,500.
Looking to become only the fourth player in Derby history to win the event multiple times, the 2019 champion came out firing and set a Derby record for a first round with 35 dingers. He crushed 13 of those before a timeout at about the halfway mark -- at one point homering on nine straight swings. The damage included bombs of 514 and 512 feet that sent fans on the left-field concourse ducking for cover. Alonso went deep 25 times in regulation but wasn’t even close to being done, adding 10 more in one minute of bonus time. The Mets slugger walloped nine bombs of 475 feet or longer and didn’t even seem tired at the end.
He added seven more before his minute of bonus time, needing only three homers to win. Soto started his bonus time with a swing and miss but quickly recovered to swat the final trio of dingers to advance to the finals and knock out his countryman. With everyone waiting to watch Shohei Ohtani swing the bat, Soto had the unenviable task of going first in that marquee matchup. With Nationals hitting coach Kevin Long throwing left-handed to the lefty-hitting Soto, he vaporized a pitch that flew 520 feet and broke the all-time Statcast distance record that Story set earlier in the round.
Wrigley Field in Los Angeles had an inner fence with palm trees and a brick wall located several feet behind it. Any pitch hit in that direction had to clear the wall or hit the top of the trees that stuck out over the wall to count as a home run. LOS ANGELES -- It was a homecoming of sorts for Rangers shortstop Corey Seager, as the former Dodgers slugger was received warmly by the crowd at Dodger Stadium on Monday night for the T-Mobile Home Run Derby.... The full field of eight competitors for baseball’s big fly bonanza was a powerhouse group, but only one man could come out on top -- Pete Alonso, for his second straight win. Given that there was no Derby (or All-Star Game) in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alonso counts as a back-to-back Derby champ. That gave him a shot to become the first ever to win three straight Home Run Derbies, but Julio Rodríguez wasn't in a cooperative mood.
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