Has anyone ever won the Home Run Derby back-to-back? Yes — exactly twice in the event’s four-decade history: Ken Griffey Jr. in 1998-99, and Yoenis Céspedes in 2013-14. That’s the entire list, which tells you how hard repeating is in an event where eight of the world’s best power hitters swing under identical conditions. Pete Alonso owns the great asterisk: he won consecutive Derbies held (2019 and 2021) with the pandemic-cancelled 2020 edition between them — back-to-back Derbies, not back-to-back years.
Here’s the full repeat-winner ledger: the two true back-to-backs, every multi-time champion, and why defending is nearly impossible.
The chart below covers the back-to-back club, all repeat champions, and the defense problem. Take a look, then we’ll break it all down.
The Kid, the Enigma, and the Asterisk
The two true repeats could not be less alike. Griffey’s 1998-99 double was inevitability made visible: the sport’s most beautiful swing, at its absolute commercial and athletic peak, treating the Derby as a personal showcase — his 1994 title made him the event’s first superstar champion, and the back-to-back that followed made him its first (and still only) three-time winner, the stretch that turned the Derby from curiosity into appointment television. Céspedes’s 2013-14 double is the great trivia answer: he wasn’t even an All-Star in 2013 (invited to the Derby as a pure power attraction), won it anyway, defended it in Minnesota the next July, and retired without ever winning another All-Star honor of any kind — a man whose entire midsummer legacy is the sport’s second-hardest repeat. Between them sits the asterisk the club will argue about forever: Pete Alonso won the 2019 Derby, the 2020 edition was cancelled by the pandemic, and Alonso won again in 2021 — consecutive Derbies held, non-consecutive years, a “back-to-back” that depends entirely on your definition of “back.” The reason the club is this small is structural: champions routinely decline the next invitation (the fatigue-and-curse calculus), and even the ones who return face a single-elimination bracket against seven other elite sluggers where one cold round ends everything. Whoever wins Monday in Philadelphia inherits the question immediately — and the shortest list in baseball waits to see if it gets a third name in 2027.
Final Word
Back-to-back Home Run Derby winners: just two ever — Ken Griffey Jr. (1998-99, part of his record three titles) and Yoenis Céspedes (2013-14, the great trivia repeat) — with Pete Alonso’s 2019/2021 consecutive-editions double as the permanent asterisk, and Prince Fielder rounding out the four-man multi-title club. Repeating is nearly impossible by design: champions skip years, fields reset, and single elimination spares no one. Monday’s winner starts the next attempt.
Every champion is listed in Home Run Derby winners by year, the single-night records are in Derby records, and the repeat-attempt disincentive is explored in the Home Run Derby curse: real or myth?.