2026 MLB Home Run Derby Odds: Making the Case for Every Contestant
Monday, July 13 — Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia — 8 p.m. ET on Netflix
Updated on 8/20/26
For the first time in over a decade, the Home Run Derby is ditching the clock. Instead of a countdown timer, 2026 reverts to a swing-based format: 20 swings in Round 1, 15 swings in Rounds 2 and 3. Any swing counts against your total whether you hit a homer or not, and if you go deep on your final allotted swing, you keep swinging until you miss. First-round ties are broken by longest home run distance; ties in the semis and final go to three-swing swing-offs. It's a meaningful shift — no more sprinting the clock down, no more "bonus time" gimmicks. This is about pure stamina and sequencing, closer to the old-school out-based Derbys of the 2000s and early 2010s. Check out this FanDuel Home Run Derby promotion.
The stage is Citizens Bank Park, which Statcast ranks as the fifth-friendliest home run park in baseball — a launching pad that should produce an especially loud night with two hometown Phillies in the field.
When, Where, and How to Watch
- Date: Monday, July 13, 2026
- Location: Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA
- Start time: 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT for the main event, with special pregame coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT
- Broadcast: Exclusively on Netflix — this is the first Home Run Derby not carried by ESPN since 1994, and the first ever streamed live rather than aired on cable. There is no traditional TV option; you'll need a Netflix subscription (no separate add-on required). Netflix has said the live broadcast can be paused, rewound, or restarted from the beginning, and the full event will be available on demand immediately after it ends.
- Booth: Barry Bonds, CC Sabathia, Anthony Rizzo, and Hunter Pence join broadcasters Elle Duncan, Matt Vasgersian, and Lauren Shehadi for Netflix's first crack at calling the event. Bonds himself won the 1996 Derby over Mark McGwire.
- Defending champion: Cal Raleigh, who last year in Atlanta became the first catcher ever to win a Home Run Derby, edging Junior Caminero 18-15 in the final. Raleigh is not participating in 2026.
The Rules
The headline change for 2026 is the elimination of the timer that governed every Derby since 2015. The event returns to a swing-based format:
- Round 1: Each of the eight hitters gets 20 swings. Every swing counts against the total whether it produces a home run or not.
- Semifinals and Final: Each remaining hitter gets 15 swings per round.
- "Keep it going" rule: If a player hits a home run on the last swing of an allotted round, they keep swinging until they finally miss — so a hot enough streak can still extend a round indefinitely.
- Tiebreakers: First-round ties are broken by longest home run distance. Ties in the semifinals and championship are broken by three-swing swing-offs.
- There's no time clock, no "outs" in the old pre-2015 sense, and reportedly no re-seeded bracket structure for the first round — it's a straightforward three-round, swing-limited elimination event.
- The shift means efficiency matters more than stamina: hitters who can be selective early to conserve high-value swings, rather than simply outlasting a clock, should have an edge in the new format.
The Field So Far
Junior Caminero, 3B, Tampa Bay Rays (+480)
The case for him: Caminero is the runner-up looking for redemption, and he's arguably the hottest hitter alive right now. He nearly became the youngest Derby champion in history last summer in Atlanta before falling 18-15 to Cal Raleigh in the final. He's back for round two, and he's been on an absolute tear — 12 homers in his last 16 games at one stretch, including a career-long 463-foot blast, and he was AL Player of the Week for a stretch that saw him pile up seven homers and 15 RBIs in six games. He's currently on pace to approach the 45 homers he hit in 2025. A win would make him the first Rays player ever to take home the Derby crown, and at 23 years and 8 days old on Derby night, he'd surpass Juan Gonzalez (23 years, 265 days in 1993) as the youngest champion ever.
The case against him: Youth and inexperience at the very top of the mountain — no player as young as Caminero currently is has ever actually won the event. Coming this close once doesn't guarantee getting over the hump, especially against a field full of players with real length and leverage in their swings.
Ben Rice, 1B/DH, New York Yankees (+850)
The case for him: Rice is the breakout story of the AL, a former 12th-round pick who's become the centerpiece of the Yankees' lineup in his third big-league season. He's third in all of MLB in home runs, having launched 51 homers since the start of the 2025 season, and his underlying Statcast data backs it up — 87th percentile average exit velocity (91.8 mph) and 89th percentile barrel rate (14.7%). He's making his Derby debut, but that's not the red flag it might seem: the last two Derby champions, Cal Raleigh and Teoscar Hernández, were also first-timers. His father Dan — a former Brown University pitcher — will be on the mound throwing to him, giving this run a personal, feel-good angle. A win would be the Yankees' first Derby title since Aaron Judge in 2017.
The case against him: First-timers can be gassed by a swing-based format they've never experienced live, and going from batting practice with dad to facing a swing-limited derby in a nationally televised event is a different kind of pressure entirely.
Jac Caglianone, OF, Kansas City Royals (+650)
The case for him: Nobody in this field hits the ball harder in terms of pure damage. Caglianone ranks in the 96th percentile in average exit velocity and 98th percentile in max exit velocity (116.1 mph), and his average home run distance of 418 feet is tied for the longest in the majors among hitters with at least 10 homers. Eleven of his 14 homers this season have been rated "no-doubters" by Statcast. He's a former first-round pick who was hitting .309/.387/.649 with nine homers in a single blistering June stretch, and he's been red-hot since June 1 with a .901 OPS. At 23, he'd also have a shot at becoming the youngest Derby champion ever.
The case against him: His counting stat total (14 homers on the season) is modest compared to some of the other names here, meaning he hasn't been tested with the kind of high-volume power binges some rivals have shown. No Royal has ever won the Derby.
Willson Contreras, 1B, Boston Red Sox (+1100)
The case for him: Contreras is in the midst of the best power season of his career at age 34, already threatening to blow past his previous high of 24 homers (set in 2019 with the Cubs). He's slashing .287/.381/.545 with a team-leading homer total and posted a .921 OPS in the first half. He'd be the first Red Sox player to win the event since David Ortiz in 2010.
The case against him: Citizens Bank Park is notoriously friendly to left-handed hitters, and Contreras is a right-handed pull hitter — in fact, only one of his 20 home runs this season has gone anywhere other than left field. He's also the oldest player in the field by a wide margin; Dave Parker, at 34 in 1985, is the oldest Derby champion ever, so history isn't exactly on Contreras's side here.
Jordan Walker, OF, St. Louis Cardinals (+550)
The case for him: Walker's is the best redemption arc in the sport this year — a former top prospect who looked like he might be out of the majors entirely a year ago, now a first-time All-Star hitting .294/.355/.534 and leading all of baseball in RBI. Physically, he's built for this: 6-foot-6, 250 pounds, with a Baseball Savant page that's practically solid red — 100th percentile bat speed, 98th percentile exit velocity, 93rd percentile hard-hit rate. He'd be the first Cardinal ever — not Pujols, not McGwire — to win the Derby.
The case against him: Swing-and-miss is a real concern. His Savant profile flips from red to blue fast once you get to contact metrics: 17th percentile whiff rate, 21st percentile chase rate, 28th percentile strikeout rate. In a swing-limited format, empty swings are the enemy, and Walker takes more of them than most of this field.
Bryce Harper, 1B, Philadelphia Phillies (+850)
The case for him: Few players have Harper's flair for the big moment, and he's got a track record to prove it. He won the 2018 Derby at Nationals Park, becoming one of only three players ever to win the event inside his own home ballpark — and now he gets a crack at doing it again, this time at Citizens Bank Park in front of the Philly faithful. A repeat would make him just the fifth multi-time Derby champion in history, and the first ever to win it at home twice. He's in the midst of a strong age-33 season, climbing back over a .500 slugging percentage and closing in on last year's home run total already.
The case against him: At 33, his exit velocity (66th percentile) and hard-hit rate sit closer to "good" than "great" compared to the younger sluggers in this field. Power numbers that once separated him from the pack have narrowed, and he'll be swinging in the same park as a teammate who's arguably having the better season.
Kyle Schwarber, DH, Philadelphia Phillies (+380)
The case for him: Schwarber leads all of Major League Baseball with 32 home runs and is the only hitter in the sport with 30-plus as of mid-July — nobody in this field is running hotter over a full season. He's a Derby veteran, too: he reached the finals in 2018 (losing to Harper) and has 219 home runs since joining the Phillies in 2022. Last year he won swing-off MVP honors at the All-Star Game by going deep on all three of his allotted swings. If he wins on Monday, he'd become just the fourth player ever to capture the Derby inside his own home ballpark, joining Ryne Sandberg, Todd Frazier, and his own 2018 conqueror, Harper.
The case against him: He was bounced in the first round of his last Derby appearance back in 2022 despite entering as the league's home run leader at the break — a reminder that raw power totals don't always translate cleanly into Derby success, especially against a swing cap rather than a forgiving clock.
Munetaka Murakami, DH, Chicago White Sox (+470)
The case for him: Murakami is the last man in, and he might be the most physically gifted pure power hitter in the entire field. The 26-year-old rookie — a former NPB superstar who terrorized Japanese pitching for the Yakult Swallows before crossing over to MLB — has been an instant sensation for a first-place White Sox team, hitting 20 home runs with 41 RBI and a .560 slugging percentage in just his first 57 major league games. His underlying data is video-game numbers: 99th percentile barrel rate and 100th percentile hard-hit rate. Half of his 20 homers have traveled at least 415 feet, and eight have left the bat at 110-plus mph. He was added to the AL All-Star team as a reserve and rounds out the field as its most explosive wild card.
The case against him: No rookie has ever won the Home Run Derby, and doing it as a newcomer to American pitching, in a new format, on a massive stage in a park he's never hit in, is a lot to ask all at once. He's also coming off swirling injury concerns (a hamstring issue popped up earlier this summer), and any lingering physical hesitation could blunt his violent, all-or-nothing swing.
The Bottom Line
This is as deep a field as the Derby has assembled in years — a mix of the game's most dangerous active sluggers (Schwarber, Contreras), a pair of former champions and finalists with something to prove (Harper, Caminero), and a wave of young, physically imposing power hitters (Rice, Walker, Caglianone) who represent where the sport's offensive identity is heading. Throw in a hitter-friendly ballpark, two hometown Phillies looking to punch their tickets into Derby lore, and a new swing-based format that rewards efficiency over stamina-in-a-vacuum, and Monday night in Philadelphia has all the ingredients for one of the more memorable Derbys in recent memory.
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