By Canadian Press

Dodgers’ Hernandez beats Royals’ Witt to claim Home Run Derby title

Jul 15, 2024 | 9:27 PM

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Los Angeles Dodgers’ Teoscar Hernández won the Home Run Derby when he beat local star Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals 14-13 in the final round Monday night.

The 31-year-old Hernández hit 49 homers over three rounds that totalled 3.98 miles and became the first Dodgers player to win the derby. Kansas City has never had a winner.

Witt, needing one to tie with one out remaining, drove a ball to one of the deepest parts of the park in left-centre, where it hit halfway up the wall.

Both finished their two-minute final round with 11 homers, before bonus swings were added. Witt came up short of his first two bonus swings, then hit two homers in a row — one a 457-foot drive that earned him one more swing.

Witt was the No. 2 overall pick by the Royals in 2019 out of Colleyville Heritage High School, about 25 kilometres north of Globe Life Field. It was his first time in the derby, but he was the high school home run champion in Washington in 2018 — and is the only player to compete in both contests.

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Witt had knocked out Cleveland switch-hitter José Ramírez 17-12 in the semifinals. Hernández, who played six seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays before being dealt to the Seattle Mariners in 2022, beat Philadelphia’s Alec Bohm 16-15 after a tiebreaker when both got three swings — Hernández hit two out, and Bohm one.

They were tied at 14 after the three-minute segment and their bonus rounds, and Bohm came close to avoiding that, but the last ball he hit then landed on the warning track in left-centre field.

Ramírez and Bohm both hit 21 homers to pace the first round. Witt started with 20 homers and Hernández had 19.

The New York Mets’ Pete Alonso fell short in his bid to join Ken Griffey Jr. as a three-time derby champion when he hit only 12 homers in the first round.

Instead of a single-elimination bracket like last year, the four hitters with the most homers in the first round advanced to the semifinal round. It then became a bracket-style competition.

Alonso hit a 428-foot homer to left-centre field on his first swing, but couldn’t get into a rhythm. The others knocked out after the first round were hometown favourite Adolis García of Texas, Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson.

“It’s disappointing, but for me, I think it’s really just a blessing and it’s just of fun being out there,” Alonso said. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t my day.”

Ozuna did have the longest homer of the night at 473 feet. Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels in 2022, and Oakland’s Seth Brown in 2021 have both hit 472 feet homers in games at the stadium that is now in its fifth season.

Bohm, one of a franchise-record eight Phillies named All-Stars, has only 11 homers this season — the fewest among the eight derby competitors. He said he was going to try to hit as many balls as he could to left field and did — pulling all 21 of his homers that way in the first round.

“Who would have thought?” Bohm said after the first round about advancing.

Ramirez hit left-handed, a change from what he has done when hitting in past home run contests, and what he had planned until a round of batting practice Monday.

It still felt like 38 Celsius outside Globe Life Park when the derby began, but the retractable roof was closed on the stadium that opened in 2020. When the Rangers hosted the 1995 All-Star Game across the street in their old stadium without a roof, the derby wasn’t yet a prime-time event and was held in the sweltering mid-afternoon heat.

Frank Thomas won in 1995 with 15 homers over three rounds in a different format. Albert Belle finished with a total of 16, then a Home Run Derby record, but Thomas beat him 3-2 in the final round.

With García knocked out, there remain only three players who have won the title in their home ballpark. The last was Bryce Harper when he was still with the Washington Nationals in 2018, after Cincinnati’s Todd Frazier in 2015 and Ryne Sandberg of the Chicago Cubs in 1990.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press