18 scintillating stats from this year's Home Run Derby
The 2022 T-Mobile Home Run Derby offered no shortage of scintillating storylines and fantastic feats.
You had a two-time defending champion Pete Alonso gunning for the event's all-time king, Ken Griffey Jr. You had a future Hall of Famer, Albert Pujols?, giving it one more shot and delighting the crowd and his much younger competitors alike. And, ultimately, you had two of the sport's brightest and most engaging young stars, Julio Rodr¨ªguez and Juan Soto, duking it out in a dramatic final round.
It was Soto who came away with the title at Dodger Stadium, capping another mesmerizing night of big flies to lead into Tuesday's All-Star Game. Here then are 18 stats and facts to know about the 2022 Derby.
A whole lot of homers
? The eight contestants Monday night combined for 291 home runs, the third most in any Derby, behind 2019 (312) and 2021 (309). Still, that's more homers in one night than have been hit in any entire MLB season at Dodger Stadium, where the record of 246 big flies was set in 2019.
? Those 291 homers averaged 416 feet apiece, for a total distance of roughly 22.9 miles. That's enough distance to get a Southern California driver nearly three-quarters of the way down the 5 Freeway between Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium.
The new champion
? The Home Run Derby finals guaranteed one of the youngest champions in the event's history: the 21-year-old Rodr¨ªguez vs. the 23-year-old Soto. Soto became the second-youngest Derby champion ¡ by a single day. At 23 years, 266 days old, he's just one day older than Juan Gonzalez was when he won the 1993 Derby.
? Soto already held the record for the longest Home Run Derby home run under Statcast tracking -- his 520-foot blast at Coors Field last year. He didn't break that mark in 2022, but he did hit the longest home run of the '22 Derby, a 482-foot shot in his first-round matchup against Jos¨¦ Ram¨ªrez.
? Soto is the second Nationals star to win the Home Run Derby in the last five years. Bryce Harper won the 2018 Derby in front of the home crowd at Nationals Park. Both Nats champions won the Derby in walk-off fashion by the exact same score, 19-18.
? Soto just keeps racking up the hardware. He is the only player to win a World Series title (2019), a batting title (2020) and a Home Run Derby title (2022) in the span of five years or less, according to STATS.
Welcome to the J-Rod Show
? Rodr¨ªguez, the Mariners rookie phenom, got the Derby started with 32 home runs, the second-most homers in a Derby first round. Only Alonso, with 35 in the first round last year, had hit more entering the 2022 Derby. J-Rod's 32 homers were also the fourth-most in any Home Run Derby round, trailing only Alonso, Joc Pederson (39 in the second round in 2019) and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (40 to beat Pederson in that same round).
? J-Rod wasn't done after Round 1. He crushed 31 more home runs in Round 2 against the reigning champ Alonso, becoming the first hitter in Home Run Derby history to post back-to-back 30-homer rounds ¡ and the first with multiple 30-homer rounds in one Derby ¡ and the first with multiple 30-homer Derby rounds, period. Entering the 2022 Derby, there had only been four 30-homer rounds, by four different hitters. Rodr¨ªguez's first two rounds brought the total to six.
? While J-Rod fell to Soto in the finals, he smacked 18 more homers first, giving him 81 total for the night. That's more than anyone other than Guerrero (91 in 2019) has hit in a single Derby.
? To put his output another way, Rodr¨ªguez finished with 33,573 feet worth of home runs -- or about 6.4 miles. That put him 50 feet past Alonso (2019) for the second-best total in any single Derby, trailing only Guerrero's 38,641 feet from 2019.
An NL East showdown
? Alonso got his three-Pete attempt started with a rematch of the 2019 Derby semifinals against Ronald Acuña Jr. -- and it ended with the exact same score. Alonso defeated Acu?a 20-19, walking off with home run No. 20 just like he did three years ago.
? Alonso did mash another 43 taters before he was eliminated by Rodr¨ªguez in the second round, which pushed his career Derby total -- already the all-time record, by far -- to 174.
? Before Acu?a was knocked out, he did join an exclusive club. His 15th big fly, which was tracked at 472 feet, cleared the roof of the left-center field pavilion and made its way out of the ballpark. In 60 years of game competition at Dodger Stadium, only five players have launched a ball entirely out of it: Fernando Tatis Jr., Giancarlo Stanton, Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza and Willie Stargell (twice).
Albert turns back the clock
? The best moment of the first round might have been the 42-year-old Pujols knocking off No. 1 seed Kyle Schwarber?, 20-19, after a one-minute tiebreaker round. This was the most home runs Pujols had hit in a Derby round, surpassing the 14 he hit in the semifinals of his first Home Run Derby nearly two decades ago in 2003.
? While Pujols still has not won a Derby, in five attempts, he also has never lost in the first round, making the semifinals or finals each time. Per ESPN, that made him the first player in Derby history to advance past the opening round five times.
? Pujols' 15 home runs in Round 2 against Soto brought his 2022 Derby total to 35 home runs, easily his most in any of his five Home Run Derbies -- his previous high was 26 in 2003, which back then was enough to lead the entire Derby.
? Pujols raised his career Home Run Derby total to 106 homers, second-most all-time. He and Alonso are the only players with over 100 Home Run Derby home runs. Pujols entered the 2022 Derby with 71 career Derby homers, which was eighth all-time at the time.
? Pujols was truly a generation apart from the rest of his competitors. The oldest of those seven hitters, Ram¨ªrez, was only 8 years old when Pujols hit his first MLB home run in April 2001. The youngest, Rodr¨ªguez, was not even 100 days old.