Perhaps foolishly, I had high hopes coming into Monday night’s Home Run Derby on ESPN. After the event ended four hours later, saying that I was disappointed was an understatement – this year’s edition of the Home Run Derby may have been one of the worst I’ve ever seen.
The event got off on the wrong foot due to a one-hour rain delay at the start. That was completely unavoidable and out of ESPN’s control, but it almost seemed to be a sign that the evening would be a struggle from the word go. Chris Berman and John Kruk were on commentary, and they weren’t good at all. There would be periods of dead air between the two at various times, and it seemed like that at other times, Kruk would simply check out of the broadcast and not offer much of anything other than a murmur.
As for Berman, you know what you’re getting at this point from him – a giant heaping of the same schtick you’ve seen for years. Needless to say, he delivered more of his schtick than you can ever image. Silly nicknames? Obscure locations? The word “back”? Yep, yep, and yep – we got all of that. But Berman also mixed in several mispronounced names, sloppy, unchecked facts, a number of missed calls, and just a flat-out lack of enthusiasm for the event.
ESPN’s production, which is normally top notch for MLB, was also shockingly terrible on Monday night. There were a number of home runs that were tracked terribly by the cameramen, either by being completely out of frame or very much off-center. Remember two months ago when Fox Sports 1 used an inexperienced crew for a nationally televised game? I got the same sort of vibe from some of the shots we were seeing during the Derby. Also, some of the directing during the event was questionable at best. We missed several players’ swings due to the broadcast instead focusing on crowd shots, player reactions, or something completely unrelated to the actual home run hitting. There were at least two hitters that took their final swing off camera because ESPN was focused elsewhere. Also, an embarrassing moment took place during the Stand Up 2 Cancer memorial in the middle of the Derby, when Berman and Kruk’s mics were left on, and you could hear Berman asking if they needed to stand.
I also wasn’t too keen on ESPN’s broadcast using the “actual” distance for home runs rather than the “projected” distance. The actual distance measures the ball from home plate to where it landed, while the projected distance takes into account the height and angle of the ball’s flight path and measures where a ball would have landed had it traveled without hitting anything (like you know, a pesky upper deck). That led to some really strange distances popping up on the screen, like a measly 440 feet showing when Giancarlo Stanton nearly hit a ball out of Target Field.
One absolute highlight of this year’s Derby, which actually comes as a pleasant surprise, was Pedro Gomez. With several Spanish-speaking players in the field and on the sidelines watching, the bilingual Gomez did a marvelous job conducting interviews and translating on the spot. Gomez was in an unforgivable position in his role of reporter, but he made the most of it with his abilities.
Finally, the new format of the Derby itself resulted in a long event that saw the two players who got byes (Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Bautista) go an hour (Stanton) or two (Bautista) between hitting. Because that’s the way to our hearts – let the players who have hit the most home runs hit *less*. Todd Frazier advanced to the final against Yoenis Cespedes by hitting two homers in the first round (and winning a swing off against Justin Morneau), six in the second round, and just one in the third round. A finalist who hit in all three rounds had as many homers as Bautista did in the first round. Cespedes also had to take part in a first round swing off, but rolled through the final three rounds and delivered the spectacle that we expect from a Home Run Derby.
All in all, the Home Run Derby showed its age tonight. This was a once-exciting event that’s been reduced to constant format changes, gimmicks, and the same tired announcing coming from upstairs. When you combine all of that with a nightmare evening of production, you have the 2014 Home Run Derby, an event that could have been the start of a needed transformation, but was instead just another edition of the same tired thing we’ve seen for years.
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