This year the Home Run Derby in Cleveland was pretty awesome to watch. Records were broken, 312 homers were hit, and very competitive for the players playing for the $1 million dollar prize. At the end it was Mets rookie Pete Alonso that won the 2019 MLB Home Run Derby.

This had to be one of my favorite Home Run Derby’s because the battle between Joc Pederson and Vladimir Guerrero Jr was going back and forth that to go to THREE tie breakers! Vladimir Guerrero Jr came out strong right from the start in the first round having 29 homers and beating Matt Chapman. Guerrero Jr came out once again in the second with 29 homers and made everyone think, “Yeah there is no way Pederson can top 29 homers.” Well……..Joc Pederson ended up tying Guerrero Jr with 29 homers having to go into a tie breaker. They went back and forth as they kept tying each other, but in the third tie breaker Guerrero Jr edged out Pederson to advance to the the Finals. It felt like Guerrero Jr had won the homers derby, but people kept forgetting that it was the second round and Vladimir had one more round left if he wanted to win. All in all that was my favorite highlight in the first bracket and most likely my favorite moment in the whole derby.

In the other bracket, it seemed like people were having their eyes on the Mets rookie Pete Alonso and Braves Ronald Acuna Jr. Alonso face Carlos Santana in the first round, and the fans were booing Alonso because they wanted the hometown favorite Carlos Santana to win. But it was Pete Alonso edged out Santana 14-13 to advance to the second round. You can see from when he hit that last home run that he was fired up and was wanting to win the derby. Ronald Acuna Jr ended the first round by hitting 25 homers to eliminate Josh Bell. Everyone had expected that Acuna Jr would advance to the the finals, but it was Alonso squeaking by Acuna Jr 20-19 to advance to the finals.

As the Finals came up, everyone could definitely see that Guerrero Jr was very fatigued when he was swinging. He used two time outs in the time he was batting and he ended up with getting 22 home runs. And after the first round and the three tiebreaker battle with Pederson, he still put some pretty good numbers. Pete Alonso went up and he finished the job. He was hitting a lot of homers early and there was no way of stopping him when he got going. He hit his 23rd home run of that round and beat Vladimir Guerrero Jr 23-22.

Vladimir was pretty disappointed that he lost, but he should’ve had nothing to hang his head about. He hit 91 homers total that night which is insane, and he made his name a little bit more popular that night. I personally think that Vladimir Guerrero Jr would’ve definitely won the Home Run Derby if he wasn’t so fatigued from the Pederson tiebreaker battle, but I won’t take anything away from Pete Alonso as he fought his way to win the title and got better and better each round. It made it a lot of fun to watch the Home Run Derby this year and I have loved the format is “How many homers you can hit in four minutes.”

I didn’t really watch the All-Star game this year, nor have I watched it the past few years. The American League beat the National League last night 4-3 which means the American League will get home field advantage in the World Series. That is a great sign for Red Sox fans if they can squeak in the playoffs and can somehow miraculously get in the World Series ;). But they got a lot of work to do.

Quick Celtics news, Guerschon Yabusele was waived by the Celtics. I know he was a fan favorite, but Yabusele did absolutely nothing for the Celtics in his time there. I am glad they got rid of him and can add a new guy to the Celtics roster, maybe Tacko Falls??

Go Celtics and Red Sox!

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