2026 MLB Home Run Derby Prediction, Odds & Preview - 7/13/2026
Updated July 13, 2026
Updated July 13, 2026
Philadelphia gets the party it has been waiting all season for on Monday night. Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, the two Phillies who have carried the middle of the Phillies lineup all year, are both in the field for Monday night's T-Mobile Home Run Derby. Add Junior Caminero, last year's runner-up, a pair of first-time entrants in Ben Rice and Jordan Walker, young power hitter Jac Caglianone, red-hot veteran Willson Contreras, and Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami, and you have eight different paths to a title in one of baseball's best hitters' parks.
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This year's Derby looks different before a single pitch gets thrown. Gone is the familiar clock that governed the last 11 editions of the event. In its place is a swing-based structure: 20 swings per hitter in round one, with the top four sluggers advancing to a 15-swing second round, and the same swing count carrying into the final. Ties get settled by a three-swing shootout rather than an extra minute on the clock. That change rewards batters who can be efficient with their cuts rather than simply piling up quantity, and it puts a premium on bat speed and contact quality over raw stamina.
Kyle Schwarber enters as the betting favorite, and it is not hard to see why. He leads all of MLB with 32 home runs, sits on pace to blow past last year's career-high 56 (he finished second to Cal Raleigh's 60), and gets to swing in the building he calls home. Schwarber has been to two previous Derbys, losing to Harper in 2018 and getting bounced in the first round by Albert Pujols in 2022. His power has traveled all season, including a 460-foot blast in Colorado and a 457-foot shot at the Bank itself. The one lingering question is whether that 2022 exit reflects a hitter who can go cold at the worst time.
Caminero, the second choice in the market, is our pick for a reason. He was the 2025 runner-up, falling 18-15 to Raleigh, and he returns with a season that has only gotten louder. He has 28 home runs, including a career-long 463-foot shot. He was AL Player of the Week after launching seven homers and driving in 15 runs in a six-game stretch, and he piled up 11 homers over a 14-game run into the break. At 23 years and 8 days old on Derby day, he would become the youngest champion in the event's history, topping Juan Gonzalez's mark from 1993. His swing produces effortless, sustained loft rather than a hitter needing to rev up, which fits the new no-clock format about as well as any bat in the field.
Murakami is the field's biggest wild card. The White Sox rookie had 20 home runs in just 57 games before a hamstring injury sidelined him for more than a month, and scouts note that 13 of those would have cleared the fence in any park in the majors. He becomes just the second Japanese-born player to take part in the Derby, joining Shohei Ohtani, and his raw power gives him a real path to the final if his timing has returned after the layoff.
Ben Rice is sitting at long odds despite ranking third in the league with 29 homers, and brings some of the best exit-velocity numbers in the sport: a 91.8 mph average exit velocity in the 87th percentile and a 14.7% barrel rate in the 89th percentile. He has struck out 86 times in 85 games with a 24.9% whiff rate, and stringing together clean cuts across three rounds asks a different question of him than squaring up a fastball in games.
Jac Caglianone and Jordan Walker both arrive with high upsides. Caglianone hit six homers in a five-game June stretch and is tied for the longest average home run distance in the field. Walker, just 24, leads baseball with 74 RBI and posts a 98th-percentile average exit velocity with a 100th-percentile bat speed, arguably the single most explosive bat-speed reading in the entire field.
Contreras, a 34-year-old first-time entrant for Boston, reached the 20-home run mark faster than at any point in his career (87 games) and owns a .513 expected slugging percentage that ranks in the top 8% of MLB hitters, with a 114.4 mph max exit velocity in the top 6%. The catch: he is a right-handed pull hitter at a park that has historically rewarded lefties, and only one of his 20 homers this season has left the yard anywhere but left field.
Harper already has a Derby trophy on his shelf from 2018, when he beat Schwarber in his home park as a National. His metrics (66th-percentile exit velocity, 78th-percentile barrel rate) are good rather than great at 33 years old, but nobody in this sport turns up the crowd at Citizens Bank Park the way he does, and adrenaline has carried lesser bats deep into Derby nights before.
Citizens Bank Park ranks as the fifth-best home run park in the sport by Statcast measure, with a short right-field porch that historically favors left-handed pull hitters like Schwarber and Rice. That ballpark factor is important, but Caminero's blend of youth, power, and a smooth, repeatable swing built for this no-clock format gives him the highest ceiling in the building. Expect Schwarber, Caminero, Murakami and Walker to round out the final four, with Caminero finally getting past the round that beat him a year ago.
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