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The contestants have three minutes in the first and second rounds and two minutes in the final round to hit as many home runs as possible. The timer begins with the release of the first pitch, and the round ends when the timer hits zero. A home run will count if the timer hits zero, so long as the pitch was released beforehand. If the second contestant in the matchup exceeds their opponents home run total, the round ends. The bracket is single-elimination, so whoever wins the head-to-head matchup advances while the loser is done for the night. • Going oppo is not a typical Derby strategy, but Soto certainly has the power to drive the ball that way.
Already this year, he’s hit seven of the Angels’ 10 hardest homers of the Statcast era, including the top three. All batters will be awarded 30 seconds of bonus time following the regulation period of each round. The bracket is a single-elimination bracket with three rounds total. Pete Alonso is your 2021 Home Run Derby champion, smacking scores of towering home runs in the thin air of Coors Field to become back-to-back champion.
Everything you need to know for 2021 MLB All-Star week
The 2021 Home Run Derby field features some of the best sluggers in the game today. We break down the rules for the event and what the bracket looks like. Trey Mancini might have the most inspiring story out of any of the Derby participants, and he wasted no time proving he belonged in the first round, putting up 24 home runs.
Due to the thin air in Denver, the Rockies instituted what is effectively a large humidor to keep balls from drying out. Denver remains a great park for hitters, but the “humidor” has helped. However, we will not see it in use for the Derby, which hopefully means we see a boost in home runs. Trevor Story just survived a ferocious comeback by Joey Gallo, and if he keeps hitting dingers like his record-setting second of the first round, he could go far.
Sunday, July 11
The Oakland Coliseum ranks near the bottom of the league in both categories. In his career, Olson has hit 67 homers on the road, compared with 59 at home. After the regulation period, a batter is allowed a break of up to one minute before his bonus period begins. Major League Baseball has reached its All-Star break, and with it comes the mostly annual Home Run Derby. Last year, the All-Star break was canceled due to COVID-19.
But since Statcast began tracking in 2015, no Colorado player has hit a longer one than Story’s 487-foot blast on Sept. 5, 2018, onto the left-field concourse at Coors Field. With the benefit of playing half his games at altitude, Story has averaged 416 feet on homers in his career, tied with Stanton for the longest of any player with 100-plus roundtrippers in that span. This was the second derby since the format change in 2015 to feature tie-breaking rounds, as Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani went to a swing-off in the first round. Winner Pete Alonso of the New York Mets tied his own record for most home runs hit in the final round with 23.
2021 Home Run Derby rules, format, bracket for All-Star week event at Coors Field
Harper won the event in 2018 in Washington and also finished as the runner-up in 2013, but no other player in Nats history has ever participated until now. Alonso, who won the 2019 Derby, comes in as the defending champ. At age 22, Soto is the youngest Derby participant this year. And if you saw Gallo drop jaws with his batting practice session prior to the 2014 Futures Game, then you can imagine what he's capable of in this kind of format.
The participants were seeded and paired off based on their home run totals as of last Tuesday. Ties were broken by awarding the higher seed to the player with a higher home run total in 2020. Trey Mancini did not play in 2020, however, so the tie between him and Pete Alonso was broken using 2019 home run totals.
Home Run Derby bracket 2021
He also broke the record for most home runs hit in the first round with 35, surpassing Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s total of 29 from 2019. With the win, Alonso become the fourth player in history to win multiple derbies and the third to win back-to-back derbies (the 2020 Home Run Derby was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The Home Run Derby format has remained unchanged since 2015.
Not only is the Japanese lefty leading the league in home runs, he’s also a starting pitcher with a sub-four ERA. The left-handed batter has pulled about two-thirds of his career homers. • Even with the pandemic-shortened 2020 and a couple of injuries, Soto is the 18th player in AL or NL history to hit at least 80 home runs by the end of his age-22 season. If Soto can hit 10 more after the break, he will be just the 11th to reach 90 by that point. • Whatever you say about Ohtani’s 2021, it’s not sufficient. He’s the 11th player to hit as many as 33 home runs before the All-Star break, but of course the first to do so while also pitching regularly .
That leaves New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso as the defending champion. In 2019, he hit 57 home runs across three rounds en route to defeating Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. in the finals at Progressive Field. The longest home run, among the total 309 hit by the eight players involved, covered a distance of 520 ft (158.50 m), and was hit by Juan Soto. This broke the record of longest home run hit in the derby, surpassing Aaron Judge's 513 ft (156.36 m) home run from 2017. In a field of baseball's elite sluggers, Angels two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani is the one everyone will be watching when the Home Run Derby begins at Coors Field. He leads the majors with 33 home runs, his batting practice sessions are legendary -- and he throws 100 miles per hour on the mound as well.
He did it by launching 57 total homers , including 20 in a semifinal victory over Ronald Acuña Jr. and 23 in the final showdown with Guerrero. Alonso earned bonus time in all three rounds by hitting at least three homers 440-plus feet, but he never actually needed it -- walking off his opponent before the end of regulation. • Alonso set the rookie home run record with 53 in 2019 and leads the Majors with 86 total dingers since the beginning of that season. He also ranks first in that span in homers hit 110-plus mph , and he's tied for first in homers hit 440-plus feet . • Gallo hits some of the most extreme dingers in the game.
After all, he has just 11 home runs this season and he was the third-longest shot to win the Derby. To me, the derby got a bit old with the previous rules but since rounds have moved timed instead of based on outs, the excitement is greater than ever. There are more than a few marquee matchups for this year's event. The 2015 World Series MVP leads all catchers in home runs through the first half of 2021. He’s looking to become the first backstop to win the competition in its 35-year history.
Will this be the night he adds Home Run Derby champion to his impressive collection of 2021 achievements? If the final pre-Derby BP blast he hit to the deep, deep reaches of Coors Field is any indication, it just might. For a second there, it looked like Shohei Ohtani was going to put up a goose egg in the first round against Juan Soto, but he recovered just in time to tie him. It took a final swing-off, in which Soto hit three towering moon shots and Ohtani hit a grounder in his first swing, for the whole thing to finally be resolved.
Home Run Derby format
Pete Alonso looks to add a second Derby title to his trophy cabinet, while Mancini continues his incredible comeback story. "I think it can set an example that you can go back to your normal life, even if you have this thing hanging over you sometimes," Mancini said. ET on both ESPN and ESPN2 with "Baseball Tonight" and "Baseball Tonight, Statcast Edition," respectively. ET on the two channels, with ESPN carrying the traditional broadcast and ESPN2 providing the "Statcast Edition."
The CBS Sports stable of MLB writers recently conducted a roundtable on this very topic, and five writers made four different predictions -- Story, Ohtani, Mancini, and OIson. Since Ohtani was the only participant to earn two votes from us, we'll go with him. After all, he's the MLB home run leader, and he also hits the ball harder than almost anyone.
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