The Home Run Derby takes center stage Monday night, as the top sluggers in both leagues will try to outdo one another in numbers and distance in front of a raucous crowd at Petco Park and a national TV audience.
Major League Baseball has descended on San Diego, for the All-Star festivities, and huge power hitters such as home run leader Mark Trumbo of the Baltimore Orioles and strongman Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins are likely to draw oohs and ahhs from the appreciative fans.
ESPN will televise the event at 8 p.m. ET.
The eight players will participate in a single-elimination tournament. They are seeded by the number of home runs they have hit, and ties are broken by the player with the most home runs since June 1.
Each batter will get four minutes in the box to blast as many home runs as he is capable of hitting. Each player is entitled to call timeout for 45 seconds in each round. Players who reach the championship round will have the option of calling timeout twice.
They will gain an additional 30 seconds of hitting time if they hit two home runs of 440 feet or longer in any round.
A one-minute swing-off will break any ties, and if it is still tied at that point, players will alternate three-swing swing-offs until a winner is determined.
Trumbo is the top seed in the tournament with a major league-leading 28 home runs and will meet No. 8 seed Corey Seager, who has bashed 17 home runs. In addition to his advantage in total home runs to this point, Trumbo has a long home run of 458 feet, and his average dinger has traveled 413 feet, according to research compiled by Doug Miller of MLB.com (h/t Statcast).
Seager has a long home run of 440 feet with an average of 399 feet.
Defending champion Todd Frazier of the Chicago White Sox is the No. 2 seed this year. He has belted 25 home runs at the All-Star break and will meet seventh-seeded Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies. CarGo has 19 home runs, and his longest blast of the season was 462 feet. His average is 422 feet.
That could give him an advantage over Frazier, whose longest home run is 427 feet with an average of 391 feet.
Other first-round matchups include No. 3 seed Adam Duvall (23 home runs) of the Cincinnati Reds against No. 6 seed Wil Myers (19) of the hometown San Diego Padres. No. 4 seed Robinson Cano of the Seattle Mariners has 21 home runs and will meet the fifth-seeded Stanton, who has 20 bombs.
Cano won the event in 2011 as a member of the New York Yankees.
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