Alex McCoy has spent the Arizona Fall League season making loud contact, and on Saturday he’ll get a bigger stage for it.
The Padres’ minor-league outfielder was named one of eight participants in the AFL Home Run Derby, set for Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, AZ, with first pitch at 5:30 p.m. PT on MLB.tv. McCoy, San Diego’s No. 26 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, will join the league’s other top power bats in a single-elimination event built around short bursts and quick damage.
The format is straightforward: each hitter gets a 90-second preliminary round, with one point for every homer. Those points carry into the first round, where the field breaks into four head-to-head matchups - No. 1 against No.
8, No. 2 against No. 7, No. 3 against No. 6 and No. 4 against No.
- The higher seed bats first in each pairing, and there’s no bonus for distance at any point.
McCoy has earned the invitation the hard way, with the kind of exit velocity that turns heads fast. Just four days into the AFL season, he smoked a 112.2-mph single.
Then on Oct. 15, he crushed a 435-foot homer with an exit velocity of 118.2 mph, the fourth-hardest hit ball in AFL history since Statcast began tracking the data in 2015. As of Oct. 27, that blast was still the hardest-hit ball in the league this season, and McCoy ranked second in the AFL with an average exit velocity of 96.7.
The power numbers back up the buzz. As of Nov.
3, McCoy had five home runs, tied for second in the league with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ first baseman/third baseman Chase Harlan and New York Yankees first baseman Kyle West. Kansas City Royals catcher Jack O’Dowd led the AFL with six.
McCoy also entered Tuesday with a .283/.409/.660 slash line, a 1.069 OPS that ranked sixth in the league, along with five doubles, 16 RBIs and 11 stolen bases in 15 games.
That production follows a strong 2026 minor-league season split between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio, where McCoy posted career highs with 19 home runs, 31 doubles, 71 RBIs and 24 stolen bases. The Padres signed him as an undrafted free agent out of Hofstra University in 2024, and his AFL showing has only strengthened the case that he’s put himself on the organization’s radar as a possible future MLB contributor, maybe as early as 2027.
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