It's a double edged sword that the batter who goes first is so punished by the format. On the one hand, Julio hit almost twice as many as he actually needed to to advance, and going that hard in the first round clearly took a bit of a toll on him and negatively affected his second-round performance. But on the other hand, it was absolutely awesome to see him just unload like that in the first round, holy shit.
I went both days and the only things people were talking about on day 2 were JRod’s 41 (of course, it’s Seattle) and Adley’s switch hitting performance. Winning doesn’t seem to matter as much as showmanship and wow-factor. For the HR Derby, I’m good with that.