Major League Baseball announced changes to the 2024 All-Star Home Run Derby on Sunday night. The event will be held on July 15 at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
The rules changes are being instituted because players who participated expressed concern that the pace of the event moved too fast, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney.
Within each of the competition’s three timed rounds, players will see a maximum of 40 pitches. Since the Derby changed to a timed format in 2015, batters and their chosen pitchers have raced through as many swings as possible. As Olney points out, each contestant averaged more than 43 swings per round in last year’s event.
Some of the players who took part in previous Derbys complained about how tiring the competition was and feared that a pace much faster and more frantic than typical batting practice risked causing injury.
The actual time limit for each round will stay the same, with three minutes for each of the first two rounds and two minutes for the finals. However, if a batter earns bonus time by hitting at least two homers of 440 feet or more, that will no longer be timed. He can also earn a fourth out by hitting a 425-foot homer during bonus time. Conceivably, that could allow a batter to keep hitting home runs until finishing ahead of his opponent.
Under the previous rules, hitters received 30 seconds of bonus time at the end of each round and could add an extra 30 seconds.
The format of the Derby will also change, going from a head-to-head bracket to the top four first-round scores advancing to the semifinals. Ties will be broken by the longest home run hit in the first round.
All eight of the participants in the 2024 Home Run Derby have not yet been announced, but MLB announced on Sunday that Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson will participate. The third-year sensation has 26 homers, tied with Shohei Ohtani for the second-most in MLB behind Aaron Judge.
“This will be my first competitive one ever, so I’m just looking to be competitive out there. I mean, obviously going to win it,” Henderson told ESPN, via MLB.com. “But yeah, as long as I can put up some competitive rounds, then I’ll be happy.”
Last year, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. won the All-Star slugfest.
