2022 Home Run Derby

Table of Content

• Longest home run in Home Run Derby
• Sunday, July 11
• Longest homer for every 2022 MLB Home Run Derby participant
• Who won the Home Run Derby in 2021? Full results, HR totals, highlights from MLB dinger contest
• Julio Rodríguez: 450 feet
• Adam Dunn, Cincinnati Reds first baseman – 535 feet, Great American Ballpark

The goal of the Home Run Derby is to hit the most homers, but this year’s group of contestants has a track record of posting incredible distances on their long balls, too. Statcast, which was created in 2015, gives us a precise measurement of just how far those homers would travel. In the early years of the Home Run Derby, 4-10 players from both the AL and NL were selected to participate. Each player was given 2 "innings" to hit as many home runs as possible before reaching 5 outs.

Then with the Chicago Cubs, Schwarber launched a grand slam off Milwaukee Brewers starter Zach Davies on July 28, 2019. The second-inning grand salami helped the Cubs earn an 11-4 victory over their NL Central rival. "I think we like seeing it fly like that, especially if it's our guys hitting it," Marlins manager Don Mattingly told MLB.com. "Balls with that trajectory, for a lot of guys it doesn't go out. He hits balls that just keep carrying. He hits them a long way." Mazara tops the list, but in seven seasons Statcast has measured a plethora of neck-craning shots that have to be seen to be believed. Here are the longest homers Statcast has tracked since Opening Day of the 2015 season.

Longest home run in Home Run Derby

But even at a time when New York Yankees star Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge are launching bombs, they do fall short of the longest HR in MLB history. During actual games, none of Mancini’s 102 career homers have traveled further than 459 feet, per Statcast. • Alonso walloped 15,659 feet worth of homers in his first round alone.

Shohei Ohtani, defending champion Pete Alonso, Trevor Story, Trey Mancini, Salvador Pérez, Matt Olson, Juan Soto and Joey Gallo will compete for this year’s title. Baseball fans everywhere know the difference between Coors Field and regular stadiums, as the ball travels farther in the thinner air due to the altitude. For tonight’s HR Derby, there appears to be no humidor to keep the baseballs regulated which means the ball will absolutely rocket out of the park. Expect there to be records of all kinds set tonight for the HR derby, especially for distance.

Sunday, July 11

Acuña had already proven his power had matured to another level when he went 473 feet off Yankees ace Gerrit Cole earlier in the 2020 season. But this was an even more epic shot off Boston's Chris Mazza, reaching the concourse behind the seats in left-center field at Truist Park to give the Braves a 1-0 lead after just one at-bat. The Texas Rangers All-Star set his career mark against the Diamondbacks on Sept. 26, 2021, one of his final regular season games as a Dodger. He pulled a 464-foot bomb against Humberto Mejia for his second home run of the game in a 3-0 win for Los Angeles.

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. Soto started hot, hitting five homers in his first seven swings, including two of 440 feet or longer. He had 10 before taking his timeout, putting himself in a great position to advance.

Longest homer for every 2022 MLB Home Run Derby participant

Notably, Ken Griffey Jr. initially quietly declined to take part in 1998, partly due to ESPN scheduling the Mariners in their late Sunday game the night before. After a discussion with ESPN's Joe Morgan and another with Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, Griffey changed his mind, and then won the Derby at Coors Field. On July 11, 1988, the day before the Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Cincinnati, TBS televised the annual All-Star Gala from the Cincinnati Zoo. Larry King hosted the broadcast with Craig Sager and Pete Van Wieren handling interviews.

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. 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. He won the event in 2000 in Atlanta, peppering Turner Field’s upper deck and launching an estimated 508-footer to center field, then was the runner-up in and ‘02, at what was then called Miller Park. After hitting a Statcast era-record 520-foot blast in last year’s derby, Soto sent a 482-foot bomb to the right-center field seats during the first round.

Longest home runs for every MLB team

Colorado Rockies All-Star C.J. Cron is the only other player with a 480-foot homer this season, hitting a 486-foot shot at Coors Field last month. Prince earned the first of his two career Derby titles in 2009 at Busch Stadium, at one point hitting a ball out of sight, an estimated 503 feet to right-center field. His dad, Cecil, famously hit multiple balls into a bar area in the third deck of center field seats in Toronto in 1991. During the 2021 MLB season, we didn’t see any of the deepest homers approach the record for the longest home run ever hit. But some familiar sluggers, including some teammates, deliver huge blasts that left everyone in the stadiums just admiring the baseball as it flew out. Larry Robinson-USA TODAY SportsWashington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto hit the longest home run in the Home Run Derby in 2021.

Each player will have 15 baseballs to hit as many balls over the fence as possible. Acuna had the quantity and the quality; six of his dingers traveled at least 450 feet, and he struck five of them with 110-plus-mph exit velocities. With everything on the line, Guerrero went 440 feet on his first swing but fell short of the fence on his last two. Pederson took his first swing out to right-center, popped up his second swing and fouled off swing No. 3 to set up yet another three-swing tiebreaker. 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."

Ronald Acuña Jr.: 481 feet

Even in an era where pitchers are throwing harder than ever and hitters are making louder contact, we rarely see 500-foot home runs. The longest blast in the StatCast era came in 2005, when Nomar Mazara hit a 505-foot cannon. Giancarlo Stanton is the second only player since 2015 to hit one 500-plus feet. Major League Baseball’s introduction of StatCast tracking makes it easier than ever to determine the farthest home runs hit travel today.

In the 1971 Midsummer Classic, slugger Reggie Jackson sent Dock Ellis’ pitch practically out of Tiger Stadium, with the ball bouncing off the roof as everyone in attendance just sat back in shock. The ESPN Home Run Tracker listed it at 539 feet, one of the longest homers hit in the recorded era. • In this Derby, 475 feet was the magic number, with any homer that long in regulation unlocking the full-minute bonus time. In a typical setting, that might have seemed daunting, but not at Coors. All eight competitors hit multiple 475-footers, led by Alonso with 20 and Ohtani with 14 .

For the first time in Derby history, Shohei Ohtani became both the first pitcher and the first Japanese player to participate in 2021. In 2000, the field reverted to the current four-player-per-league format. The only exception was 2005, when Major League Baseball changed the selection criteria so that eight players represented their home countries instead of their respective leagues. The change was believed to be in promotion of the inaugural World Baseball Classic, played in March 2006.

He followed that a few swings later with a massive 480-foot homer, earning an extra minute in a span of four homers. Alonso still had some work to do, as he hit only 10 home runs before his break. He came back a little sluggish, hitting three homers before rattling off four straight to bring his total to 17 ahead of bonus time. Alonso needed only 30 seconds before walking it off with his 20th dinger. 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.