The mid-summer classic is upon us as baseball breaks for the always exciting All-Star break. With the break comes every baseball fans favorite event the Homerun Derby. Here are the players competing this year and who can potentially win it.

The Homerun Derby

Every kid who grew up playing baseball always dreamed of being in the Homerun Derby (after of course making it to the major league diamond). Every kid went to their local field and played the infamous 10 out Homerun Derby to see who could hit the most Home Runs and the farthest ones. This year two new faces to baseball Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees who cannot stop blasting baseballs out of the park and Cody Bellinger of the LA Dodgers who since being called up is on track to have easily 30 home runs this season.

The Rules and Seeding

The derby this year will be a little different from previous. This year each contestant will have only 4 minutes to smack as many home runs as possible out of Marlins Park, however, if the player or players hit 2 or more home runs of 440 feet they will receive an extra 30 seconds which could be big for closing a gap or extending a lead. The seeding of the derby is as any other 8 player bracket with the first seed playing the 8th seed and 2nd seed playing the 7th and so on.

The seeding of players is 1st Giancarlo Stanton, 2nd Aaron Judge, 3rd Cody Bellinger, 4th Mike Moustakas, 5th Miguel Sano, 6th Charlies Blackmon, 7th Justin Bour, and finally 8th Gary Sanchez.

Best odds to win the Derby

Many are cheering for the hometown kid Stanton to take home the crown for the Home run Derby and for back to back titles. We have seen it won back to back twice before by Ken Griffey Jr (1998, 1999) and Yoneis Cespedes (2013, 2014) it is very hard to do though.

As AL players have won it more often than players from the NL (19-13).

It will be interesting to see who takes home the crown. Best guess to win the Derby is Aaron Judge the rookie phenomenon from the Yankees who right now is putting up unbelievable numbers while at the plate.

He also just recently crushed a home run 495 feet.

Judge currently leads the league in home runs at 30 and with that mark broke “Jumpin” Joe DiMaggio’s rookie home run record in the Yankees franchise. If anyone is going to give Stanton a run at the title it will most certainly be him. For anyone who has seen Judge in batting practice knows Judge can easily hit everything that comes his way out of the park. However, an underdog that could possibly come from behind and shock a lot of people is Mike Moustakas.

Moustakas is coming back from a slump in the month of May where he hit an average of .232 which is not too good for what he has done in previous years.

However this year Moustakas has hit more home runs than he has ever hit before in a season at 25 and it is only the midway point in the season. Do not be surprised if Mike Moustakas comes out of nowhere pulls his home runs to the left side as he has been doing mostly all year.
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