You could be forgiven if you just learned about the tiebreaker change to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game prior to Monday night’s Home Run Derby. Announced as part of the new collective bargaining agreement back in March, the Midsummer Classic got a much-needed boost that felt buried underneath the smoldering wreckage of labor negotiations.
Starting tonight through the 2026 edition of the All-Star Game, should the Midsummer Classic be tied after nine innings, the game will end with a shortened Home Run Derby to determine the winner. Perhaps because fans were still side-eying team owners instead of reading every fine detail in the CBA, MLB and all the media associated with it pushed notifications out mere hours before the real Derby took place.
(Funny enough when asked about the change during a media session, it was news to the Washington Nationals’ star outfielder Juan Soto, who would end up winning the Derby despite incredible efforts by Seattle’s Julio Rodriguez. “I don’t even know,” he replied about potentially being one of the selected hitters – he wasn’t. “Can’t do that. It’s got to be a fresh guy doing that.”)
Though this is another way to create excitement about the game itself at the stadium, clearly this format change is about television. Despite the predictable fist-shaking about any adjustment to the sanctity of the game, this is a good and smart move for an event that has gone stale long ago. All sides involved with Major League Baseball hope that this latest tweak reinvigorates the All-Star Game just like the NBA’s starry exhibition was freshened up with the Elam ending.
For starters, this means that the game itself has as close to a predictable end time as it ever had. The Midsummer Classic hasn’t often gone to extra innings in its lengthy history (13 times since the first ASG in 1933). On top of that, it has only gone to extras three times since the infamous 2002 tie that led to then-commissioner Bud Selig hitching home-field advantage to the World Series to the winning side. Cutting out extra innings from what has always been an exhibition game helps everyone avoid the possibility of another 4-½ hour, 15-inning slog of an event such as the 2008 swan song for the old Yankee Stadium. Less is more, quite frankly.
For FOX, the network certainly has to appreciate the potential of increased viewership in the late innings of a tight game. Save for the National League’s 8-0 win in 2012, the games have been fairly close affairs, with 12 of the last 19 games decided by one or two runs. A late inning rally might be fun for those in attendance, but with nothing at stake anymore after the “This One Counts” era mercifully ended in 2016, there’s little incentive for the viewers at home to stay up late for an exhibition in the middle of the summer.
While it’s not going to happen this year, the idea of an unofficial rematch of the real Derby is alluring in its own right. (It would have been fascinating if both Soto and Rodriguez, who thrilled the masses in Monday’s Derby, were chosen as hitters in the tiebreaker.) Beyond that, asking a few guys to mash some dingers sounds a lot more fun than watching managers overthink bullpen and bench strategies in a game that doesn’t count in the standings.
There’s another potential change on the horizon that, while more impactful for regular season and postseason games, would make the format change even more worthwhile – the pitch clock. Should MLB remain on track to adopt new rules in 2023, the pitch clock may finally accomplish commissioner Rob Manfred’s dream of speeding up the leisurely game. While its merits are still up for debate, FOX would be rather pleased to have the clock to shave off a few more minutes if it means a potential derby-style tiebreaker happens further away from 11PM on the East Coast.
Let’s be real, the game hasn’t been anywhere close to the TV juggernaut it once was in at least a generation. Arguably, if not for convenient scheduling and the nostalgia for some piece of Americana, the game would be a sporting afterthought. Needing to overcome multiple years of record-low viewership, the MLB All-Star Game won’t reach more than 10 million viewers because of the tiebreaker Derby alone.
However, live sports still perform better than celebrity-hosted game shows and syndicated reruns. FOX will likely win the night in terms of ratings and viewership anyway, a critical point in this uber-fragmented era of daily entertainment. We may not know if a tiebreaker will even take place between now and 2026, but MLB deserves some rare kudos for adding novelty to a stagnant product.
