This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Blake Schuster
As much fun as the MLB All-Star Game has become in recent years, there’s really not much baseball can do to make it cooler than the Home Run Derby.
No matter how many times MLB changes the format or rules of the derby — no matter if the players are going head-to-head or advancing through a bracket — it turns out people will fill a stadium and tune in to watch (most of) the best hitters in the sport sock some dingers.
At the end of the day, MLB just can’t screw up this formula. We saw this when Vlad Guerrero Jr. won the event in Seattle on Monday.
And yet! The competition is inherently held on an uneven playing field because the league allows batters to choose their own pitchers. It’s kind of silly, isn’t it?
Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing who sluggers pick to throw them batting practice every year. There’s also something hilarious about watching sons hit absolute moonshots off their dads on one of the sport’s biggest stages. It also adds to some jaw-dropping moments like Adley Rutschman going yard from both sides of the plate in one at-bat. But it also doesn’t really make sense, does it?
If the idea is to see who can hit the most home runs over a given timeframe, why not use a pitching machine that we know puts the ball in the same spot every time? Why entrust the most important variable of the Home Run Derby — where the ball crosses the plate — to relative chance?
Anyone who wanted to see Adolis Garcia put on a true display of his power on Monday night would’ve appreciated some consistent balls over the plate. Instead, they watched his pitcher get absolutely roasted on social media. Pete Alonso has won the derby twice but his pitcher on Tuesday couldn’t stop painting the corner, which limited his ability to hit them out of the park.
Don’t even get me started on the betting aspect — that segment of fans would surely love to see pitching machines used.
The Home Run Derby is really just a silly exhibition, so it’s not like this is a change that needs to happen, but you can’t help but wonder if it would make the event better in the long run. The cost of the incredible pitcher-batter storylines may not be worth tinkering with this one, but it’s certainly worth a conversation.
Boppenheimer…The NFL’s Supplemental draft explained…and more
— Boppenheimer. Barbenheimer. Oppbie. Whatever you want to call the Barbie and Oppenheimer crossover, it’s fantastic. Charles Curtis has more.
— Here’s our Christian D’Andrea explaining how the NFL Supplemental draft works. Thank goodness.
— Here’s more on the 2023 FIFA World Cup Format from our Prince Grimes.
— Here’s how to get a free Slurpee from 7Eleven on 7/11.
See you tomorrow!