Baseballs were flying out of Petco Park during Monday’s T-Mobile MLB All-Star Home Run Derby. The eight contestants belted 202 balls out of the ballpark — a record 61 by winner Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins.
Stanton, who entered the game with 19 home runs on the 2016 MLB season, out-slugged his opponents in all three elimination rounds to claim the top prize.
“Oooo, what a night at Petco Park!” Stanton posted on his Twitter account after winning the event.
The home run derby has become as big —or, some say — even bigger than the MLB All-Star Game. Petco Park was jammed with onlookers on Monday hoping to bring home a few souvenirs.
The competition rules are fairly simple. Each hitter gets four minutes to hit as many home runs as possible on balls thrown by a designated pitcher as per batting practice-style. If a hitter belts two pitches beyond 440 feet, he gets an additional 30 seconds added to the original time limit.
The format is bracket-style elimination based on individual seeding. Orioles outfielder Mark Trumbo, with 28 homers to his credit at the midseason break, entered this year’s tournament at the No. 1 seed. Chicago White Sox infielder Todd Frazier, the event’s defending champion, was seeded second, followed by Adam Duvall of the Cincinnati Reds (third seed), Seattle’s Robinson Cano (fourth seed), Stanton (fifth seed), the Padres’ Wil Myers (sixth seed), Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies (seventh seed) and Corey Seager of the Los Angeles Dodgers (eighth seed).
Ties in any round would be broken by a 60-second swing-off. Each hitter could call one time-out in the opening two rounds and have the benefit of two time-outs in the finals.
In the first round, Seager, 22, made a case to become the youngest home run derby winner after launching 15 balls into the stands. But Trumbo quickly eliminated him after hitting 16.
Stanton, whose nickname is “Bigfoot,” then wowed the crowd by hitting 24 home runs in his first turn at bat, including a monster 497-foot shot and 14 shots that travelled beyond 440 feet. Cano, a seven-time all-star who entered the competition with 21 home runs this season and won the home run derby in 2011, rather meekly bowed out after hitting only seven homers during his turn at the plate.
The six-foot-six, 245-pound Stanton faced Trumbo in the semifinals, winning 17-14. Stanton pumped up the fans even more after depositing 14 of his 17 yard shots beyond the 440-foot mark, including another blast that measured 497 feet. Trumbo, a native of Anaheim, did land one shot 479 feet from home plate as a consolation prize.
On the other side of the bracket, Duvall out-dueled Myers by a count of 11-10 while Frazier edged Gonzalez 13-12.
Myers entered the contest with 19 home runs on the season while Duvall had recorded 23. Myers’ longest shot traveled 431 feet. The Padre first baseman hit seven balls beyond the 440-foot mark to earn bonus time. Duvall’s longest shot managed 429 feet.
In the semifinals, Duvall stepped up to the plate first and hit 15 balls over the fence without any bonus time. Frazier, however, did not need any bonus time to launch 16 pitches into the stands to advance to defend his title.
Stanton, 26, may have saved his best performance for the finals when he blasted 20 balls out of the park, including 11 for more than 440 feet, to thoroughly please the crowd. Frazier could only muster 13 home runs in his final turn at bat to fall short of repeating as home run derby champion.
Of Stanton’s record 61 homers, 47 traveled 440 feet or farther. He tallied the eight longest homers hit during this year’s competition and 20 of the longest 21.
“I grew up watching this,” Stanton told the media after the event. “Now I’ll have kids saying the same thing, they watched me do this. I like to return the favor.”
Frazier finished the competition with 42 home runs in three rounds while Trumbo recorded 29 home runs and Duvall blasted 26 homers.
Gonzalez drove one ball 450 feet.
Surprisingly, Stanton, a native of Panorama City and graduate of Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, won Monday’s home run derby despite not being selected to play in Tuesday’s actual MLB All-Star Game.
Miami will host the 2017 MLB All-Star Game and Stanton, who has recorded some of the top exit velocities off the bat and tackles batting practice rapid-fire, figures to be in attendance to defend his title.
Stanton is signed through the 2027 season as part of a 13-year $325 million contract.
Stanton’s legendary performance cost event sponsor some big bucks as $582,000 will be donated to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and youth baseball.
