When Teoscar Hernández needed a moment to calm down during the Home Run Derby, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger got a boost from a former teammate who just happened to be last year’s champion.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr wore a Blue Jays jersey with Hernández’s name and No 37 on the back as he watched the competition, honoring his friend from their time as Toronto teammates from 2017-22.
“That was a surprise of the night,” Hernández said. “He brings my jersey from Toronto. And when he goes to home plate, he was trying to calm [me] down, and so he had passed two times, and it works. He said he wanted to help me going into the last round.”
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 on Monday night.
The 31-year-old Hernández hit 49 homers over three rounds and became the first Dodgers player to win the derby among 11 who have tried.
“If I have to bet, it doesn’t matter who I’m going against, I’m going to bet on myself,” Hernández said when asked if he felt like the underdog.
Witt, needing one home run to tie with one out remaining, drove a ball to one of the deepest parts of Globe Life Field in left-center, where it hit halfway up the wall.
“When I hit it I knew I kind of – I didn’t hit it great. But, yeah, I just was trying to blow on it or something,” Witt said with a chuckle. “The first thing I thought was just no pop … We got to do a couple more curls or something.”
Kansas City have never had a derby winner. Hernández won $1m along with the title and Witt earned $750,000 for finishing in second place.
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 457ft drive that got him one more swing.
Witt had knocked out Cleveland switch-hitter José Ramírez 17-12 in the semifinals. Hernández 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 14-14 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-center 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.
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Alonso hit a 428ft homer to left-centerfield on his first swing, but couldn’t get into a rhythm. The others knocked out after the first round were hometown favorite 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 fun being out there,” said Alonso who has 207 homers in his five derby appearances. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t my day.”
Ozuna had the longest homer of the night at 473ft. The longest homers hit during games at the stadium were 472 feet – by Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels in 2022, and Oakland’s Seth Brown in 2021.
