The competition is rather primitive, with only one real objective: bashing a lot of home runs a long way. We now know Giancarlo Stanton is going be hitting balls to other planets for a long time to come. Stanton hit the top level of the hitter’s eye with his remarkable shots in center field and the Western Metal Supply Structure to the left.
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Stanton spent his Monday night launching mammoth shot after mammoth shot, bulldozing his way through the bracket.
Major League home run leader Mark Trumbo and Padres hometown favorite Wil Myers were among those challenging defending champion Todd Frazier.
Stanton had a stunning 26 homers in his first duel with Seattle slugger Robinson Cano to easily move on. Former Mariner Mark Trumbo, who leads the majors with 22 homers at the All-Star break, beat Corey Seager.
Frazier defeated Cincinnati’s Adam Duvall 16-15 on the final swing of their semifinal match. The deal will be good for any of 35 future home games. The most impressive statistic may be the last one.
This is the second year of the Derby using a bracket format, with Stanton entering the night as a five-seed. The right fielder has raised his batting average 40 points since June 15, hitting.
He also joked around that a couple of his final-round homers were stolen by fans reaching over the wall.
Stanton put on quite the exhibition in the All-Star eve event. Certainly not the Marlins marketing department, who may have felt an increasing amount of fear with every homer Stanton hit.
SAN DIEGO Two men stood on the balcony of a high-rise across the street from Petco Park, about 20 stories up, holding a homemade sign that read “HIT HERE FREE BEER” with a target in the middle. That sounds like a pretty cool marketing campaign, but when the player in question hits 61 homeruns in the competition, it becomes a problem. In fact, he’s probably having the fourth-best season by a Marlins outfielder (behind Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich and 42-year-old Ichiro Suzuki). “If we were one or two away, we would have had to go to replay or something because I’m not going out like that”.
Stanton is on a pace to set many records.
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“To be honest with you, I didn’t look back to see where they were landing”, said Shine. With a $325 million over 13 years, he has the biggest contract in baseball, so there are some things to comfort him while he waits for an All-Star invite next year. These were the four best hitters the Home Run Derby produced. Monday night was his time.
