Kyle Schwarber kept his bid for a Home Run Derby title in his home park alive when the Phillies’ slugger and major league home run leader hit 10 in the first round and advanced with Boston’s Willson Contreras, St. Louis’ Jordan Walker and Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero to the next round Monday night.
Bryce Harper hit only eight home runs and was the final slugger of the round to try and advance. He provided a late jolt with Phillies fans at Citizens Bank Park going wild trying to will Harper into one more round.
Harper won in 2018 in Washington when he played for the Nationals.
Kansas City’s Jac Caglianone and New York Yankees slugger Ben Rice also failed to advance.
Contreras and Walker each hit 13, and Caminero had 12.
Schwarber failed to launch one of his famed Schwarbombs until his sixth swing, then connected on his seventh, eighth and ninth in a four-homer stretch that harkened back to his four-homer game last season again Atlanta.
He could only watch as Harper failed to join him. Schwarber, then with the Chicago Cubs, made the finals in 2018 at Nationals Park before losing to Harper.
“Bittersweet,” Schwarber said after the first round Monday. “I wanted both of us to move on.”
MLB ditched the timed clock this season and returned to a swing format, with each hitter continuing to swing if he went deep on his final one.
Each player had 20 swings in the first round and the top four advanced. Hitters were seeded for the second round, where No. 1 faces 4 and 2 meets 3.
Each player takes 15 swings in the second round, with batters homering on their final swings continuing until not homering.
Schwarber and Harper — the first pair of teammates to participate in the Derby since 2018 — received roaring ovations when famed ring announcer Michael Buffer introduced them ahead of the competition.
As for the other six sluggers in the field, all wearing their home jerseys with red, white and blue uniform numbers?
Yeah, they were about booed out of the ballpark, with the loudest jeers saved for Rice. He gamely laughed as he walked out of his Liberty Bell entrance.
Harper — who said earlier Monday this would be his last Derby — waved his arms and exhorted the crowd to get louder as he walked to the home plate platform placed at second base. Harper about broke the ring ropes as he shook them like a pro wrestler, and the Philly crowd went bonkers for the star known as The Showman.
The ball-shagging kids in the outfield were even booed.
The Derby’s public address announcer implored the fans to cheer during some quiet stretches when homers — non-Phillies edition — were hit.
The fans did get a rise when Caglianone smoked one into Ryan Howard territory into the third deck in right field. Contreras socked ’em into the rarified air of the left field upper deck. One homered cleared the last row of stands in that section and bounced off the concourse in front of a bar. His 490-footer was the longest of the first round.
Caminero — last year’s runner-up to Seattle’s Cal Raleigh — watched stunned as his final swing just hooked foul in left field and stuck his homer total at 12.
The longest Derby homer since Statcast started tracking in 2016 was 520 feet by Juan Soto in the mile-high air of Denver’s Coors Field in 2021.
This was the first Home Run Derby and All-Star Game held at Citizens Bank Park since it opened in 2004 and the first derby in Philadelphia since Barry Bonds outslugged Mark McGwire in 1996 to win an afternoon event in front of thousands of empty seats at Veterans Stadium.
This derby was sold out and aired on Netflix for the first time, with the streamer getting into the game this season with a three-event package. Netflix already aired the opening night game, and the third attraction is the Field of Dreams game between the Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies on Aug. 13.
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