I got the chance to do a Matt Vasgersian interview to talk about the Home Run Derby and the Phillies season. Netflix will be airing the Home Run Derby for the first time on July 13 and Vasgersian will be on the call. The Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game are at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia for the first time. This is the fourth time the All-Star Game will be in Philadelphia with the previous editions being in 1952, 1976 and 1996. The 2026 All-Star Game being in Philadelphia was announced all the way back on April 16, 2019, so it has been a long wait of sorts.<\/p>\n
It happens to work out that Philadelphia has hosted the All-Star Game in both the bicentennial year and the semiquincentennial year for the United States with the 250th birthday being celebrated on July 4, 2026<\/a>. <\/span>“I don’t know everybody saw this coming years ago when the Phillies won the All-Star Game for 2026 because those bids are submitted and handed out years before the event,” Vasgersian said. “And if somebody did piece together the 250 with Philadelphia, how perfect.”<\/p>\n “I’ve encouraged as many players and managers that I’ve spoken to, to embrace the Founding Fathers theme and go look for those vintage shoes with buckles on them,” Vasgersian said. “Don’t be afraid to sport the white whig, let’s lean into it, it only comes around every 250 years, none of us are going to be around for 500.”<\/p>\n So far Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays and Ben Rice of the New York Yankees are the two announced participants. Caminero has 26 home runs and Rice has 25 home runs this season entering play on July 7. “I’ll start the who else I’d like to see list with Kyle Schwarber,” Vasgersian said. “I think I speak for the world in that regard.” Schwarber has 30 home runs this season entering play on July 7 and has participated in two previous editions of the Home Run Derby.<\/p>\n MLB made some changes to the Home Run Derby format<\/a> this year by eliminating the clock and moving to a swing based format. “I like the format changes on the players’ behalf and more so than effecting the competition, because I think it’ll make for a little bit of a more relaxed round for each hitter,” Vasgersian said. Each participant will get 20 swings in the first round and if a player advances to the semifinals or the finals they would get 15 swings in each respective round.<\/p>\n On April 28 the Phillies fired Rob Thomson<\/a> and named Don Mattingly as the interim manager for the remainder of the 2026 season. The Milwaukee Brewers are the lone team with a higher win percentage than the Phillies since Mattingly took over entering play on July 7. “It’s my understanding from talking to the players about it there was such an expectation that there was going to be a change, that once that change came, people were able to relax,” Vasgersian said. “But that’s not to say, that those guys didn’t like playing for Topper.”<\/p>\n “I think a lot of the players felt terrible that what happened to Rob happened,” Vasgersian said. “But it’s also impossible to ignore that they’ve really taken off under Donnie and the Braves are looking over their shoulders.” Heading into play on July 7 the Phillies trail the Atlanta Braves for the NL East lead by three games. For comparison the Phillies were 10 1\/2 games back of the Braves in the NL East when Mattingly took over for Thomson. As noted in the Vasgersian interview the NL East is up for grabs between the Phillies and Braves.<\/p>\n Another topic covered in this Vasgersian interview is what the Phillies should do at the trade deadline after entering the season with high expectations. “I think some of the perceived offensive holes have really solified themselves with better performance,” Vasgersian said. “Bryson Stott put that bad start behind him, Bohm put that bad start behind him.” Vasgersian does believe that the Phillies would still benefit from adding a right-handed outfield bat.<\/p>\n “But more so the failure of the Phillies in the postseason the last number of years has been the bullpen in the Division Series, in the LCS, in the World Series,” Vasgersian said. “And I guess if I’m going to predict one big really impactful move it would be that stud reliever.” In the Vasgersian interview he named Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman as a top trade fit for the Phillies to upgrade their bullpen. Chapman was also commonly mentioned as a trade fit for the Phillies<\/a> at the 2025 deadline and it would make sense for the team to inquire with the Red Sox about the availability of Chapman in trade talks.<\/p>\n Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got the chance to do a Matt Vasgersian interview to talk about the Home Run Derby and the Phillies season. Netflix will be airing the Home Run Derby for the first time on July 13 and Vasgersian will be on the call. The Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game are at Citizens Bank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4566,"featured_media":125339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,23],"tags":[1987,209,28591,2654,28375,516],"class_list":["post-125337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-phillies","tag-alec-bohm","tag-aroldis-chapman","tag-ben-rice","tag-bryson-stott","tag-junior-caminero","tag-kyle-schwarber"],"modified_by":"Ben Rosen, Staff Writer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125337"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125353,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125337\/revisions\/125353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Matt Vasgersian Interview<\/h2>\n
Potential Home Run Derby Participants And Format Changes<\/h3>\n
<\/h3>\n
Phillies Managerial Change<\/h3>\n
Phillies Trade Deadline Outlook<\/h3>\n