Teoscar Hernández wins $1m and Home Run Derby in first for Dodgers player

When Teoscar Hernández needed a break during the Home Run Derby, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger got a boost from a former teammate who happened to have won the championship the previous year.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. wore a Blue Jays jersey with Hernández’s name and number 37 on the back when he watched the game, as a tribute to his friend from their time as teammates with Toronto from 2017-2022.

“That was a surprise of the night,” Hernández said. “He brings my jersey from Toronto. And when he goes to home plate, he tries to calm me down [me] down, and so he had passed twice, and it works. He said he wanted to help me get into the final round.”

Hernández won the Home Run Derby when he defeated local star Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals 14-13 in the final round on Monday night.

The 31-year-old Hernández hit 49 home runs in three rounds and became the first Dodgers player of the 11 players to win the derby.

“If I have to bet, it doesn’t matter who I’m playing against. I’m going to bet on myself,” Hernández said when asked if he felt like the underdog.

Witt, needing one more home run to tie the game with one out, hit the ball to one of the deepest spots in Globe Life Field, left-center, where it landed halfway up the wall.

“When I hit it I knew I didn’t do great. But yeah, I just tried to blow it or something,” Witt said, laughing. “The first thing I thought was just no pop … We gotta do a couple more curls or something.”

Kansas City has never had a Derby winner. Hernández won $1m along with the title, while Witt earned $750,000 for his second-place finish.

Both finished their final two-minute rounds with 11 homers before bonus swings were added. Witt fell short on his first two bonus swings, but then hit two straight homers – one of them a 457ft drive that earned him another swing.

Witt had knocked out Cleveland switch-hitter José Ramírez 17-12 in the semifinals. Hernández defeated Philadelphia’s Alec Bohm 16-15 on a tiebreaker when both had three strikes – Hernández struck out two and Bohm struck out one. The two were tied at 14-14 after the three-minute segment and their bonus rounds, and Bohm nearly escaped, but the last ball he hit landed on the warning track in left-center field.

Ramírez and Bohm both hit 21 homers to lead the first round. Witt started with 20 homers and Hernández had 19. Pete Alonso of the New York Mets fell short in his bid to join Ken Griffey Jr. as a three-time Derby champion when he hit just 12 homers in the first round.

Alonso hit a 428ft home run to left-center field on his first swing, but couldn’t find a rhythm. The others knocked out after the first round were hometown favorite Adolis García of Texas, Marcell Ozuna of Atlanta and Gunnar Henderson of Baltimore.

“It’s disappointing, but for me it’s just a blessing and it’s just fun to be there,” said Alonso, who has hit 207 homers in his five Derby appearances. “At the end of the day, it wasn’t my day.”

Ozuna hit the longest home run of the night, 473 feet. The longest home runs hit during games at the stadium were 472 feet — by Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels in 2022 and Seth Brown of Oakland in 2021.