Derby day always starts with nostalgia before it gets to business, and that's exactly how the Barstool timeline opened. Sammy Sosa in a Cubs jersey, launching balls over Bernie's Dugout, is the kind of clip that needs no explanation on July 13th — it's just the sport's oldest slugfest getting its yearly victory lap before the real thing tips off at Citizens Bank Park.
A throwback clip of Sammy Sosa's iconic Derby run kicked off the day's hype.
The actual news is that MLB blew up the format again. Gone are the outs and the countdown clock that turned recent Derbies into a blur of rapid-fire swings; this year every hitter just gets a fixed swing count — 20 in round 1, 15 in each round after — with a bonus that lets a guy keep swinging past his limit if he goes deep on his very last cut. It's a swap from timer-chaos to something closer to the old-school, methodical Derby, and Eric Hubbs is fully on board with the spirit of it even if he's not sure it's the exact right fix.
When I think of the Home Run Derby I wanna see how far these guys can hit a baseball, not how many they can hit in three minutes going rapid fire. The event became impossible to broadcast with how quick the balls were flying out. This will be better, but outs might be the best
Hubbs followed that up by hedging on the swing-count solution itself, wondering if MLB will still find these rounds moving too fast even without the clock, and floating a version that leans even more old-school by bringing outs back into the mix. It's the classic Derby debate: purists want time to savor the moon shots, everyone else just wants the fireworks to keep coming, and there's no format that's going to make both camps happy at once.
Josh Hamilton's legendary 2008 Derby at Yankee Stadium got dug up as the gold standard for the moon-shot era Hubbs wants back.
While the format debate played out, the gambling wing of Barstool was busy turning the field into a parlay. Quick Picks came in trying to extend a streak of three straight winning slips, teeing up Junior Caminero, Jordan Walker and Ben Rice to make the semifinals on a DraftKings-backed pick. Megan piled on with her own build, sprinkling in an over on Walker's longest homer and tabbing him as a finalist alongside Caminero — she even framed it as personal redemption 6 years after a rough first stream.
The Quick Picks crew broke down their Home Run Derby parlay picks on camera.
Eddie and OhioTate had their own Pick6 picks live for the night, and Barstool Gambling ran its own straight-up odds question on who takes the whole thing, so there's no shortage of ways the account is trying to cash in on Philly hosting the hometown guy. That's the other subplot nobody's ignoring: Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber both get to swing in front of their own fans at Citizens Bank Park, which is why Marty Mush was only half-joking about needing someone in the Philly crowd to bring an actual glove for Harper's outfield defenders. Between the format tinkering, the parlay chases and a hometown Phillie in the field, tonight's Derby has more storylines than most Home Run Derbys manage to scrape together.