The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 MLB Home Run Derby.
This year’s Home Run Derby will look a little different when the sluggers square off Monday night in Philadelphia. Instead of limiting the hitters to a certain number of “outs,” or non-home run batted balls, they will be limited to a specific number of swings.
The most important effect this should have is a reduced workload on the hitters. Home Run Derby participants almost certainly won’t hit 30 or even 40 homers in a single round as they have in the past, since they will receive only 20 swings in the first round and 15 swings in the second and final rounds. (However, hitters will be able to continue to swing, until they make an out, if they homer on their final swing of a round.)
Said another way, endurance will matter less this year than pure, raw power.
Maybe that’s more in line with what the event is supposed to celebrate. It could also produce a better final than the prior rules managed to create in the past few years. Of the 20 best single rounds in the Derby since 2017, only one occurred in the finals. And that round — Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 25-homer closing statement in 2023 — is tied for 15th.
In the past, when looking at the Derby field and trying to predict the outcome, it made sense to focus on the final round, and to focus on the winners. But these new rules may not produce the pattern we’ve seen recently, where a great hitter hits a ton of homers in the quarterfinals or semifinals, and then both hitters seem a little gassed in the last round. With the Derby operating without a clock for the first time since 2014, and the focus more on raw power than endurance, let’s instead look at the best rounds of all time and see what insights we can glean.
Here are the best rounds in the last eight derbies:
Best Home Run Derby rounds since 2017
Since we are interested in rounds, we will analyze all 126 rounds in the Derby since 2017 instead of the eight finals in that span. (There was no All-Star Game or Home Run Derby in the pandemic 2020 season.) If you look at correlations between each player’s regular-season stats and their rounds, few stats show up as significant. In fact, only one has a statistically significant relationship: EV90. That stat is the 90th percentile of a player’s exit velocities over a season, and is tightly correlated with Bat Speed.
That makes sense. Bat Speed and EV90 are our best measures of raw power, and this event is all about raw power.
So, how do this year’s eight Derby participants look through the lens of Bat Speed and EV90?
Derby contestants by power metrics
Junior Caminero owns the fastest bat in the league right now. When he launched a 463-foot home run off Merrill Kelly in late June, he hit the ball 3 feet farther than any other Derby contestant has hit one this year. He’s hit 10 balls more than 425 feet, the most in MLB. So Caminero, last year’s runner-up, has to be seen as the favorite through this lens, even if Kyle Schwarber leads the majors in homers.
Does that make sense? Since Schwarber has the most home runs, shouldn’t he be the favorite?
The thing about home runs in a regular-season game, though, is that the pitcher is trying to compete. Those home runs, obviously, are the product of many factors — not just raw bat speed. Schwarber swings at strikes at a rate that is 40 percentage points higher than the rate at which he swings at balls. That difference is 10 points better than Caminero’s. Schwarber’s plate discipline nets him some of those home runs, but that plate discipline is fairly irrelevant in an event where the pitcher is basically lobbing the ball and hoping for a dinger.
The same could be said for Munetaka Murakami, who is in the 90th percentile when it comes to making decisions about balls and strikes. That has helped him blow past industry expectations and has provided a ton of value to the White Sox this year, but it may not help him Monday night.
Jordan Walker may be 10 home runs off the National League lead, but he also has a really quick bat and has demonstrated elite raw power. If there’s a dark horse, it’s him. He’s swinging the bat harder than he ever has before, and also finally lifting pitches. He might have the shortest track record of power hitting in the field — he or Jac Caglianone — but these youngsters have tools that have translated into the biggest rounds in recent derbies. Willson Contreras is a part of the fastest-swingers group, too, even if he’s a veteran compared to the other hitters swinging 77-plus mph. (Contreras and Schwarber are 34 and 33 years old, respectively; Caminero, Caglianone and Walker are about a decade younger.)
The Derby will take place at Citizens Bank Park, and the hometown crowd may provide Bryce Harper and Schwarber with an incalculable boost. Still, if you’re going to take one of the veterans, take Schwarber and his extra three ticks of bat speed and batted ball oomph. It’s what the numbers say works.
Then again, Cal Raleigh won last year, beating Caminero despite ceding four ticks of bat speed and maximum exit velocity to him. That gives hope to the slowest bat in the Derby, Ben Rice, who as a lefty has one advantage: Citizens Bank Park is the top place for lefty homers in baseball, but only middle of the pack for righties.
Caminero will have to hope that the new rules play to his fundamental strength — he has the quickest bat in baseball — and that his homers will go so far that the park factors won’t matter. Monday night could be a great showcase for the standout slugger.
