MLB: 2017 Dream Home Run Derby Lineup

There’s just over a month until Major League Baseball takes a four-day break for All-Star festivities. Chief among these All-Star festivities will be the Home Run Derby. Let’s create the ultimate lineup.

Last year’s MLB Home Run Derby had a pretty solid crew, with eventual champion Giancarlo Stanton joined by Mark Trumbo, Todd Frazier, Adam Duvall, Robinson Cano, Wil Myers, Carlos Gonzalez, and Corey Seager. Like I said, solid lineup. Trumbo and Duvall have your “raw power” guys covered, Seager and Myers are your “young guns,” Cano and CarGo have the beautiful swings that mesmerize us on screen, and Frazier, well he had his run, let’s move on.

This year we can do even better. First of all, we can not invite Todd Frazier for yet another year, and it can only get better from there. With the amount of long ball specialists we have floating around the league right now, there’s no excuse for failing to put together the most loaded field in the history of the Derby.

What follows is a dream bracket, eight players in their four first-round matchups, one matchup per slide. If you recall, the Derby is now set up such that two hitters square off in a round, getting four minutes of running time (with bonuses for longer home runs) to hit as many home runs as they can with limited timeouts (one in the first two rounds, two in the final). The winner moves on and faces another one-on-one matchup in the semifinals and the same goes for the final. It’s a bit different than the Derby we grew up with, but it is nice in that it adds plenty of drama to even the first round.

The odds of all eight of the following players agreeing to join this year’s Derby is basically zero, but if we can get even four or five of them, it might be the best Derby in recent memory. Let’s meet the gang.

Stats through Sunday’s games.