ATLANTA — Big Dumper helped drive a big boost to ratings for Monday night’s Home Run Derby.

ESPN said Tuesday that viewership for Cal Raleigh‘s Home Run Derby victory was up 5% from 2024, according to Nielsen ratings. Raleigh’s win over fellow finalist Junior Caminero of Tampa Bay drew an average audience of 5,729,000 viewers, up from 5,451,000 viewers in 2024 when Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Teoscar Hernández topped Bobby Witt Jr. in the finals.

ESPN says the combined audience on ESPN and ESPN2 peaked with 6,307,000 viewers at 9:30 p.m. ET. That made the Home Run Derby one of the most-watched programs of the day, including all broadcast and cable choices.

Raleigh’s father, Todd, was his personal pitcher for the event. The Seattle catcher’s 15-year-old brother, Todd Jr., was his catcher. The elder Raleigh is a former coach of Tennessee and Western Carolina.

Raleigh, 28, leads the majors with 38 homers and 82 RBIs and is the American League’s starting catcher in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game.

Raleigh became the second Mariners player to win the Derby, following three-time winner Ken Griffey Jr., who was on the field, snapping photos.

The 2025 MLB All-Star Game has arrived!

Will the American League continue its dominance over the National League with its 11th victory in 12 years?

All-Star newcomers, such as Pete Crow-Armstrong, and veterans, such as Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, will join the rest of baseball’s best and descend on Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves, for this year’s Midsummer Classic — and we’ll have live updates and analysis from Atlanta throughout the game (8 p.m. ET on Fox).

After the final pitch is thrown, ESPN’s MLB experts will share their biggest takeaways right here as well. Let’s kick off the day with some predictions for Tuesday night’s game.

All-Star Game live updates

The starting lineups

Who will win the All-Star Game and by what score?

Jorge Castillo: The National League 5-2. The NL has the better lineup and will win the game for just the second time since 2012, when Melky Cabrera won MVP honors in Kansas City.

Jeff Passan: The National League will win 3-1. The NL has a far superior lineup to the AL, and in an All-Star Game where pitchers are unlikely to throw more than one inning each, the ability to pile up baserunners seeing a pitcher for the first time is paramount. The NL is more equipped to do that than the AL.

Who is your All-Star Game MVP pick?

Jesse Rogers: Cal Raleigh. I mean, he’s going to homer … that’s a given. He might even hit two. The “Big Dumper” is going to dump a blast into the right-field stands, putting another exclamation mark on an already incredible season. He won the HR Derby, and he’ll win All-Star Game MVP.

Alden Gonzalez: Pete Crow-Armstrong. He’ll have the most productive offensive night among the NL starters and, at some point, make an incredible catch in center field. Crow-Armstrong is 95 games into his age-23 season and has already accumulated 4.9 FanGraphs wins above replacement. He has become a star right before our eyes — and he seems to love the lights more than most.

What’s the matchup you are most excited to see?

Rogers: Let’s start the bottom of the first inning off with a bang, as Tarik Skubal, the starting pitcher for the AL, will face Shohei Ohtani, who is just 1-for-9 off the left-hander. Does the reigning AL Cy Young winner get an early strikeout of the reigning NL MVP, or does Ohtani finally get to Skubal? Not many matchups are guaranteed in the All-Star Game, but this one is — and it’s about as good as it gets.

Castillo: Jacob Misiorowski against anybody. The rookie right-hander’s inclusion after just five career starts produced a stir across the majors, and all eyes will be on him once he takes the mound. When he does, his 103 mph fastball should certainly play in his one inning. He’s as tough of a matchup as any pitcher in this game.

Who is the one All-Star fans will know much better after Tuesday night’s game?

Gonzalez: The San Diego Padres ended up sending three relievers to the All-Star Game, but there was one clear bullpen representative from the outset: Adrian Morejon. The 26-year-old left-hander doesn’t get much notoriety, but he has been utterly dominant, posting a 1.85 ERA and an expected slugging percentage of .263. He doesn’t strike hitters out at the absurd rates of some of today’s most dominant pitchers, but he gets outs. And he’ll probably get three big ones toward the end of the night.

Passan: Perhaps they already know Misiorowski because his fastball sits at 100 mph and his slider is in the mid-90s, but this is the sort of showcase built for him. One inning, let it eat and show that even though his career is only five starts deep, this will be the first of many All-Star appearances for the 23-year-old.

The Tampa Bay Rays will play potential postseason games at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, setting up the possibility of a World Series staged in a minor league stadium with a capacity of 10,046.

The move came after discussion of potentially shifting postseason games to an alternate major league stadium, with Miami‘s LoanDepot Park among the sites considered. The Rays are playing their regular-season games this year at Steinbrenner Field, home of the Low-A Tampa Tarpons, after hurricane damage tore the roof off Tropicana Field and rendered it unfit for play in 2025.

The Rays occupy fourth place in the American League East at 50-47 but are just 1½ games behind the Seattle Mariners for the third wild-card spot in the AL.

Commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday he anticipates the Rays will return to Tropicana Field, which is being refurbished, for the 2026 season.

By then, the Rays could be under new ownership. While an agreement has yet to be signed, the sale of the team for $1.7 billion to an ownership group led by real estate developer Patrick Zalupski continues to progress, sources told ESPN. The change of team control would not happen until after the postseason, sources said, though there could be a signed agreement in place prior to that.

The Rays would likely stay in the Tampa Bay area after being sold by Stu Sternberg, who bought the team in 2004 for $200 million.

Sternberg pursued a sale of the Rays in the wake of the team pulling out of a deal with St. Petersburg, where Tropicana Field is located, for a $1.3 billion stadium. The sides had agreed to the deal prior to Hurricanes Helene and Milton causing more than $50 million worth of damage to Tropicana Field.

The Pinellas County board of commissioners in October 2024 delayed a vote to fund its portion of the stadium. Less than a month later, the Rays said the delay would cause a one-year delay in the stadium’s opening and cause cost overruns that would make the deal untenable without further government funding. In mid-March, Sternberg told St. Petersburg mayor Ken Welch the team would back away from the stadium deal.

Where Zalupski and his partners — mortgage broker Bill Cosgrove and Ken Babby, an owner of two minor league teams — ultimately take the Rays remains a question central to MLB’s future. Manfred has said he wants the stadium situations of the Rays and Athletics — who plan to play in a minor league stadium in West Sacramento, California, until moving to Las Vegas before the 2028 season — settled before MLB expands to 32 teams.

“If I had a brand new gleaming stadium to move [the Athletics] into, we would have done that,” Manfred said. “Right now, it is my expectation that they will play in Sacramento until they move to Las Vegas.”

Potential Twins sale: Manfred also addressed a potential sale of the Minnesota Twins, which had a “leader in the clubhouse” until earlier this summer. Billionaire Justin Ishbia turned away from the Twins, striking a deal to purchase the Chicago White Sox as early as 2029.

That left the Twins to look elsewhere.

“When it becomes clear there is a leader, everyone else backs away,” Manfred said. “A big part of the delay was associated with them deciding to do something else.”

The commissioner wouldn’t give specifics but believes a deal to sell the Twins is moving in the right direction.

“I’m not prepared to tell you today,” Manfred said. “There will be a transaction there and it will be consistent with the kind of pricing that has been taken [lately]. Just need to be patient there.”

Television contracts: Manfred says the sport is in better position to reach national broadcasting agreements for 2026-28 following the Allen & Co. Conference of media and finance leaders in Idaho.

In February, ESPN said it was ending its agreement to broadcast Sunday night games, the All-Star Home Run Derby and the Wild Card Series after this season. MLB’s other agreements, with Fox and TBS, run through the 2028 season, and MLB wants all its contracts to end at the same time.

“I had lot of conversations [in Idaho] that moved us significantly closer to a deal and I don’t believe it’s going to be long,” Manfred said Tuesday.

Gambling integrity: Though another MLB player — Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz — is being investigated for issues related to gambling, the commissioner insists the system is working and that legalization has actually helped protect the sport.

“We constantly take a look at the integrity protections we have in place,” Manfred said. “I believe the transparency and monitoring we have in place now is a result of the legalizations and the partnerships that we’ve made. [It] puts us in a better position to protect baseball than we were in before legalization.”

Manfred is referencing gambling monitoring companies and the league’s agreements with gambling entities that inform MLB if they find suspicious activity surrounding their players. That is what happened to Ortiz, sources close to the situation told ESPN.

ABS implementation: Though not all players have outwardly expressed a desire for the ABS challenge system to be implemented full time, Manfred believes he has taken their input on the subject.

On Monday, All-Star starting pitchers Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes were lukewarm on the idea — at least for it being used in the All-Star Game.

“I don’t plan on using them [challenges],” Skubal said. “I probably am not going to use them in the future.”

Added Skenes: “I really do like the human element of the game. I think this is one of those things that you kind of think umpires are great until they’re not. And so I could kind of care less, either way, to be honest.”

Manfred insists the challenge system idea came via a compromise after talking to players.

“Where we are on ABS has been fundamentally influenced by player input,” he said. “If two years ago, you asked me what do the owners want to do? They would have called every pitch with ABS as soon as possible.

“The players expressed a strong interest in the challenge system.”

All-Star return to Atlanta: After pulling the All-Star Game from Atlanta in 2021 due to new voting laws, Manfred was asked why the return to the city and state.

“The reason to come back here is self-revealing,” Manfred said. “You walk around here, the level of interest and excitement with a great facility, the support this market has given baseball, those are really good reasons to come back here.”

Diversity Pipeline Program: Manfred was also asked about his decision to change wording on the league’s website in relation to its Diversity Pipeline Program. He cited the changing times for the decision but stated the spirit of the programs still exist.

“Sometimes you have to look at how the world is changing around you and readjust to where you are,” Manfred said. “There were certain aspects to some of our programs that were very explicitly race and/or gender based. We know people in Washington were aware of that. We felt it was important recast our programs in a way to make sure we could continue on with our programs and continue to pursue the values we’ve always adhered to without tripping what could be legal problems that could interfere with that process.”

Immigration protections for players: As for new immigration enforcement policies since President Donald Trump’s administration took over in Washington, Manfred said the government has lived up to its promises.

“We did have conversations with the administration,” Manfred said. “They assured us there would be protections for our players. They told us that was going to happen and that’s what’s happened.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.