Table of Content
- This Week In … Telling Hecklers To Cram It!
- Vlad Jr. turns down Home Run Derby invite to protect wrist
- Guerrero hit a record 91 home runs in 2019, but hasn't signed up for a Derby since
- The summer of Vlad Guerrero Jr. is here and his dingerific Home Run Derby show proved it
- Dodgers News: LA Works Around Payroll With Trevor Bauer Contract
- Shirtless JR Smith steals the show at MLB All-Star celebrity softball game3yTory Barron
"I told them that I wasn't going to be able to do because I preferred to rest and be ready for the second half to help the team win games." With 29 homers, Guerrero broke the all-time Home Run Derby record for most homers in a single round. Just before the event, the Rangers tweeted about that old mark, set by Josh Hamilton in his unforgettable outing at the old Yankee Stadium in 2008. Round two started with Guerrero, and he brought the crowd to its feet with 29 home runs, matching the record that he had set barely an hour ago. But then Pederson, who was the Derby runner-up in 2015, matched him. He hammered his 29th homer as the clock buzzed, and each player was given 60 additional seconds to break the tie.
Carlos Santana, representing Cleveland, delighted the crowd but hit just 13 homers. Pete Alonso managed to beat that just as the clock was winding down, but he heard boos as he beat the hometown hero. “Survive and advance” was Alonso’s mantra throughout the night, and it served him well. With Guerrero going first and Pederson following, both sluggers finished with a round-record 29 home runs in the four-minute time limit, plus the 30-second bonus time for sending two balls more than 440 feet. Both then hit eight more in a one-minute tiebreaker round. In the first round, Vlad Jr. hit 29 homers, breaking the record for most in a single round.
This Week In … Telling Hecklers To Cram It!
With three more swings, Guerrero finally out-hit Pederson and advanced to the final. He hit 40 home runs to Pederson’s 39, which is a truly mind-collapsing number of home runs. CLEVELAND — Carlos Santana got the loudest roar to start the night, and Vlad Guerrero Jr. had the most support throughout, but the winner of the 2019 Home Run Derby was New York Mets rookie Pete Alonso. Guerrero had the crowd in the palm of his hand with his home run heroics , but Alonso hit 23 in the final round. He emerged victorious even though the crowd booed him through most of the night. Votto wasn’t the only player who got the best of a loudmouth in the stands last week.
After one night, he has the second-most home runs in Derby history -- and nearly five times as many as his father, the Hall of Fame outfielder who won the 2007 Derby. It's the most succinct summation of what took place on Monday at Progressive Field. Guerrero started the day with eight career major league home runs and questions about whether he belonged in the field when 181 big leaguers have hit more homers than he has this season.
Vlad Jr. turns down Home Run Derby invite to protect wrist
Ninety-one homers dwarfed Alonso’s three-round total of 56, but that’s the trade-off for the Derby’s exciting bracket-style setup that has reinvigorated this event in the past five years. Palmeiro hit 569 career homers and finished with more career Wins Above Replacement than Eddie Murray, Hank Greenberg, and Harmon Killebrew. Yet he faded into the ether once the steroid accusations began and has remained in a kind of limbo ever since. In the world of baseball cards, Palmeiro’s barely worth a dollar.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit 91 home runs -- more than seven miles' worth -- in his unforgettable Home Run Derby debut.Gregory Shamus/Getty Images"That was elite hitting," Alonso said. Guerrero Jr., however, was matched by his opponent, Dodgers slugger Joc Pederson, who hit a last-second home run to send the matchup into a tiebreaker round. Vlad Jr. added eight more home runs to his total, giving him a total of 66 home runs, surpassing Stanton’s single-Derby record of 61 from ‘16. At 20 years and 114 days, Guerrero Jr. became the youngest participant in the history of the Home Run Derby. But it didn’t take Vlad Jr. much time to set more records with his bat. In the finals, Guerrero faced Pete Alonso, who had turned in a terrific evening of his own against Ronald Acuna Jr. and Carlos Santana.
Guerrero hit a record 91 home runs in 2019, but hasn't signed up for a Derby since
Alonso will take home the $1 million prize, but he won’t keep all of it. He’s donating five percent — $50,000 — to the Wounded Warrior Project, an organization he feels connected to through his grandparents, and another five percent to Tunnel to Towers. That match-up was dramatic and thrilling, but it wasn’t the final. Acuña and Pederson squared off to see who would face Guerrero in the last round. Acuña hit 19, but Alonso beat him with another buzzer-beating home run. Oakland’s Matt Chapman, Guerrero’s first competitor of the night, stood no chance.
Robert Ivory wore Vlad Sr.’s Montreal Expos jersey, carried a cutout of Vlad Jr.’s head. He’s a big enough fan of Vlad Sr. that he went to his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. He likes the Indians too — this is Cleveland after all — but he grew up in the era where so many baseball fans were in awe of free-swinging Vlad Guerrero. And now we’re all in awe of his baseball-bashing 20-year-old son. Round after round, Guerrero was hitting lasers into the left field bleachers, most of them landing in the two sections of seats under the left side of Progressive Field’s scoreboard. They started booing Joc Pederson as he pushed Vlad Jr. to all those tiebreakers.
The summer of Vlad Guerrero Jr. is here and his dingerific Home Run Derby show proved it
That was enough to overcome a respectable output of 18 from the Pittsburgh Pirates' Josh Bell. And even though British fans don’t seem fully up on how this whole rooting for baseball thing works—given the preponderance of split Yankees/Red Sox attire and this terrifying level of joy over a ball—they did get one thing completely right. The Year of the Rabbit Ball has made it that much harder to build a Derby field, if only because you have more good candidates than open spots. When everyone’s hitting for power, it’s hard not to feel like a deserving name is going to get left out. But alas, only two spots remain, and I don’t envy those who have to narrow down the field. Alonso hit another walk-off homer in the semifinals, launching his 20th of the round over the trees behind the center-field fence as the four-minute clock expired to give him one more than Acuna's 19.
(New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso won.) The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 All-Star Game, and Guerrero has now since passed on both the 2021 and 2022 editions. Despite not walking away as the champion, Guerrero Jr. broke the record for most home runs in any round and in total , led the Derby with 27 home runs with a distance of 440 feet or more, and starred in one of the best battles in Derby history. En route to beating Oakland’s Matt Chapman in the first round, Guerrero Jr. launched 29 home runs, the most in any round in Derby history, surpassing Josh Hamilton’s 28 home runs in 2008, although that was done in the previous format that changed in ‘15. In the current format, Giancarlo Stanton held the record with 24 in ‘16. But Pederson stunned the crowd by tying both him and the single-round record he just set with 29 of his own. During the summer I turned 20, I worked at a Toys R Us distribution center.
Given the advantage of going second, Pederson could only tie Guerrero's one home run in the first swing-off and had two chances to force a fourth tiebreaker but didn't homer on either. Vlad Jr. just wanted a moment to himself, and when he finished answering the final question about his 91-home run performance at the 2019 Derby, he took a breath and said, "Ay dios mio." Vlad Jr. then matched his own record in the second round, finishing with another 29.
By the time Alonso hit his final home run to win the final 23-22, Guerrero's numbers almost defied belief. He hit 38,641 feet worth of home runs -- the longest 488 feet, the shortest 373, the average more than 424. He finished with 34 more homers in his three rounds than Alonso.
While Guerrero didn't win the 2019 derby, he certainly stole the show in Cleveland, hitting 91 home runs, the most of any player. Unfortunately for Toronto, New York Mets' first baseman Pete Alonso eeked by Guerrero with 23 home runs in the final round of the derby to claim the crown. Pederson, who lost in the final as a rookie in 2015, now has the most combined home runs at the Derby all time, with 99, while Guerrero -- in his first appearance -- tied the previous record of 91 held by Todd Frazier, who also competed twice. With the win came a cool $1 million bonus to supplement Alonso's base salary of $555,000. He said he would donate 10% of his winnings between two charities, the Wounded Warriors Project and the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Guerrero broke the Derby's single-round record in each of the first two rounds, but after surviving an exhausting duel with Joc Pederson of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the semifinal round, Guerrero didn't have enough to beat Alonso in the final.
His average home run distance was 421.5 feet and the average exit velocity was 104.8 mph. Pederson responded with just one home run, allowing Guerrero Jr. to advance to the Derby final after a historic battle. Still, Guerrero's overall record of 91 in a Derby is what so many people are going to remember from this show.
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