Soto has been the subject of trade rumors after reportedly rejecting a $440-million contract extension.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Right now I’m not even thinking about it,” Soto said on the ESPN broadcast. “I’m a champion and I’m a champion with the Nationals.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Despite falling short in the final, Rodriguez went from a player to watch in the future to star of the present. The 21-year-old rookie, who has helped the Mariners to a 14-game win streak, hit 81 total home runs over three rounds. He entered with 16 home runs over his first 91 major league games.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Rodriguez advanced with a 31-24 semifinal victory over two-time defending champion Pete Alonso of the New York Mets.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
While Soto eliminated Albert Pujols in the second round, it was the St. Louis Cardinals’ legend that received just as much fanfare. Soto pushed through with a 16-15 advantage in semifinal-round homers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It was pretty awesome (and) I’d like to thank all my peers,” Pujols said on the ESPN broadcast. “It’s pretty awesome to see this young generation and all the talent. And I want to thank all the fans here, the Dodgers fans.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pujols, who is set to retire after 22 seasons, played 85 games for the Dodgers last season after 10 years and 1,181 games with the cross-town Los Angeles Angels. He is back in St. Louis where he played his first 11 seasons.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pujols, the No. 8 seed, advanced out of the first round with a 20-19 victory over top-seed Kyle Schwarber of the Philadelphia Phillies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Other highlights of the opening round included Rodriguez’s show-stopping 32 home runs and 480-foot blast from Alonso on top of the corrugated roof that hangs over the back seats of the Dodger Stadium bleachers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Rodriguez defeated the Texas Rangers’ Corey Seager 32-24 in the first round, while Alonso topped the Atlanta Braves’ Ronald Acuna Jr. 20-19 in walk-off fashion, Soto defeated Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Guardians 18-17, also on a walk off.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Rodriguez’s opening-round total was the second most in a quarterfinal in Home Run Derby history.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
–By Doug Padilla, Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELES — Juan Soto put contract talks and trade rumors behind him for one night as the Washington Nationals star won the Home Run Derby on Monday at Los Angeles with a 19-18 advantage in the finals over Seattle Mariners rookie Julio Rodriguez. Soto didn’t hit his first home run of the final round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}