All Hail Home Run Derby King Pete Alonso and Coors Field Air

Peanut butter and jelly. R2D2 and C-3PO. Eric B. and Rakim. Some combinations cannot be wrong.

On Monday, Major League Baseball took one iconic combo – bats and balls – and paired it with another: the Home Run Derby and Denver’s Coors Field. Take the stadium with the finest air, turn off the humidifier, turn the temperature over 90 degrees, and add eight of baseball’s biggest hitters. The result, as expected, was a deluge of dingers. A cavalcade of dingers. A orgy of dingers. It was the second hottest Home Run Derby in history, nearly matching the peak home run rate year of 2019. When the Bullets and fans finally stopped falling, the derby was won not by betting and fan favorite, Shohei Ohtani, or welfare underdog and finalist, Trey Mancini, but by defending champion, batter of Mets Pete Alonso.

Alonso, who said on Sunday he would win again, looked like he couldn’t be beaten – as if no matter how many home runs his opponent hit, he would be good for one more (or a lot more, if they let him continue). As was the case in 2019, Alonso didn’t care who was Assumed win, that would have been the best story, or whether he was a candidate to be the face of baseball. He just wanted to break huge dongs, and he could have kept doing it all night. Beating Mancini, who put on an inspired (and inspiring) performance a year after surviving stage 3 colon cancer, Alonso joined Ken Griffey Jr., Prince Fielder and Yoenis Céspedes as the winner of multiple derbies. At 26, he’s got plenty of derbies ahead of him if he’s going to keep coming back – and apparently there’s nothing he’d love more than to make derby mash a staple of his summers. It could be the start of a derby dynasty, assuming MLB doesn’t ban it for dominating too much.

Alonso, helped by the precise control 64-year-old BP pitcher (and Mets bench coach) Dave Jauss, sent Salvador Pérez with a 35-home shootout in the first round, knocked out Juan Soto in the semifinals and passed Mancini’s 22 in the final. Swinging colorful wood and scrambling the tunes of the Coors Field audio system (or maybe a soundtrack in his own head), he became a striking metronome, a being specifically built snap again and again. At no time did he look nervous, rushed or gassed, and even injuries to bullet collectors couldn’t disturb his pace. While other hitters sprayed dingers across all fields, Alonso locked onto left field, shooting all but two of his taters which he sent to center. Soto (520) and hometown hero Trevor Story (518) both topped Alonso’s longest blast of 514 feet, but Alonso outlasted all comers to claim both bragging rights and the price of a million dollars, almost double his 2021 salary. (Perhaps being drastically underpaid is a powerful incentive.)

Before the derby, two figures absorbed most of the mile-high oxygen: Ohtani and Coors himself. MLB home run leader Ohtani was going to get the national shine that Angels games don’t often provide, showcasing his batting training power the day before before returning to the limelight as a starting pitcher. from the AL All-Star team and main hitter. Coors increases the score more than any other park, but with the anti-dinger humidifier in effect, this isn’t the happiest park anymore. Wisely, the MLB benched the cellar on Monday in the interest of maximizing distance. Aaron Judge’s record for longest derby dinger tracked – 513 feet in 2017 – looked certain to fall, and it didn’t last long.

Ohtani hits the ball harder than any other competitor, which has been the best recent indicator of derby success. But the derby is an unpredictable beast. Todd Frazier won one. Bobby Abreu won one. Garret Anderson won one. Before Alonso overtook him on Monday, the all-time leader in derbies was Joc Pederson. Ohtani, who hadn’t taken batting practice on the pitch since opening day, detonated balls in BP in Coors in 2018 and threw one 510 feet just before the start of the derby. But once his impulses counted, he started off slow, ripping doubles down the line. His pitcher, Angels’ bullpen catcher Jason Brown, was wild compared to Jauss, and he worked slower than some of his counterparts. But once Ohtani found his rhythm, he increased his tally to 22, which tied Soto and set up a swing-off. Then the two tied again, at six years old, which left them with three swings each.

Soto, who was surrounded during the breaks of the All-Stars who invaded him like cornermen between the rounds of boxing, took advantage of his supernatural plate discipline. He watched a few balls go by, waited for those in his wheelhouse and moved up to 3 on 3, putting pressure on Ohtani, who missed his first shot to end the suspense. The Japanese star, who recently became the first AL player to score 16 times in 21 games, was out of the race, although the 2016 NPB Derby champion ran 513 feet before succumbing. (In a slight disappointment, the Moonshot machine Joey Gallo also came out in the first round, succumbing to Story.)

Ohtani is breaking the rules of baseball both figuratively and literally: not only has he changed our understanding of what is possible in the sport, but his unique skills and popularity have persuaded MLB to rewrite the rules of All. -Star Game to allow it to play back and forth. . But on Monday, he couldn’t catch up with Soto, whose odd sense of the strike zone eclipses the force and distance with which he hits the ball. Even though Ohtani had pressed by Soto, he would have struggled to get ahead of Alonso. At least losing early has helped him maintain strength for the showcase ahead.

In the absence of the Juniors (Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuña Jr.), the giants (Judge and Giancarlo Stanton), or other notable hitters like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, the derby field 2021 lacked a bit of star power. (No offense to Matt Olson.) But no matter which challengers threw their bats in the ring, the derby has been a treat since the elimination of strikeouts and the advent of brackets and timed laps in 2015. Even people who don’t like home run highlights dig the derby now. In recent years, the event has been supported by both the new format and a series of memorable solo exhibitions: Stanton in 2016, Judge in 2017, Harper in his Home Park in 2018, Guerrero (and Alonso) in 2019. Alonso’s first-round fireworks display, Ohtani and Soto’s showdown, and Mancini’s emotional return after cancer treatment provided the stories to accompany the powerful feats.

This year the rules have been changed again: the timed heats have gone from four minutes to three for the quarterfinals and semi-finals, and to two for the finals. But each batter was given 30 seconds of company-sponsored bonus time, plus an additional 30 seconds if he hit at least one ball to 475 feet (which was almost automatic at Coors). In addition, the old restriction on throwing the ball before the previous explosion has been removed, placing even more emphasis on speed. In this version of the derby, the inefficient market was the fast-paced BP pitcher, and a few of the pitchers seemed to be taking their time, even turning to see where the big flies were landing. While the connection between the batter and the handpicked pitcher can be touching at times, the inconsistency between the arms made me wish for a rubber arm pitcher that could pitch to every batter, or even an anthropomorphic pitching machine. . I would prefer the results to be entirely attributable to the batters, and not to a combination of batting and bench coaches or field receivers.

While the unrestricted bombardment apparently went well in the park, it resulted in a chaotic and at times impenetrable broadcast, as even the split screens couldn’t follow every swing while following every trajectory. While each dinger’s distance has been listed on Coors Field and online, ESPN chose not to report each reader’s distance on one of its stat-rich shows, opting instead for averages, highs, and highs. sporadic mentions by broadcasters. Sometimes that made home viewing frustrating; I wanted more time and screen to admire and measure the most majestic flies before preparing for the next one.

Alonso last month suggested that the MLB tone down and cushion baseball to selectively suppress free agent income. This is not why the ball has been deadlier this season, but it is true that it does not go so far: the average distance on the hard-hit flies is down compared to 2019. However, according to the historical standards, the ball remains mega-juice. . The rate of homers on contact is the third highest in history, behind 2019 and 2020, and that’s with more months of warm weather yet to come. The ever-animated ball, paired with Coors and the timed format, had another year of ridiculous tallies. This is the era of home run records, not only in games but also in exhibitions.

By the time Alonso pulled out in the first round there had already been more home runs hit than in any derby from 1985 to 2014. We can’t say we were cheated or that Coors didn’t. held on.

If there was a way for the logistics to work, the derby would be at Coors Field every year. As it stands, it was the first derby in Denver since 1998, when surprise participant Griffey, who was in attendance for the festivities on Monday, won his second of three crowns. Griffey’s total is Alonso’s goal next year. The pandemic has kept Pete from winning a derby, but MLB hitters have yet to hold him back.