It turns out there is room for timers and clocks in baseball.
Cincinnati Reds third baseman Todd Frazier played the role of hometown hero with aplomb, crushing 15 home runs in the final round at the Great American Ball Park to beat out Los Angeles Dodgers rookie outfielder Joc Pederson‘s 14 dingers in a wildly entertaining derby that breathed new life into the auxiliary All-Star Weekend event.
The 2015 Home Run Derby saw the debut of a new single-elimination format in which players were pitted against each other trying to hit the most home runs in timed rounds. Bonus time was awarded for hitting homers over 425 feet, which nearly everyone did and was in no way a problem. It was simply too much fun.
The new format essentially did away with the worst part of the previous 10-out format: hitters taking pitches—none of which were nearly as fast or as difficult as those encountered in a live game—until they saw a ripe, fat one heading straight down the middle. Even then, they wouldn’t always hit it out.
The players got to swing away like Joaquin Phoenix in the movie Signs, and fans everywhere reaped the benefits. This nugget from ESPN Stats & Info pointed out that the Derby was at least twice as awesome as last year:
Here’s a look at the results from the Home Run Derby
Highlights
Frazier, who hit all of one humble home run in last year’s Home Run Derby finals, put on a breathtaking performance this year.
After a slow start that saw him off the pace of Pederson‘s 14, he took his allotted timeout and then turned into a moonshot machine, tying Pederson just before his initial time expired. This set up a purportedly tense bonus-time round in which Frazier had 30 seconds to make sure he swatted another big fly.
With the crowd’s roar swelling, Frazier defused the tension and sent Great American Ball Park into ecstasy with one swing:
Frazier gave credit to the crowd for helping him power through the competition.
“Just hearing the crowd call my name, the adrenaline, those last minutes of each round really picked me up,” Frazier said, per USA Today‘s Steve Gardner. “I appreciate that a lot.”
With so much time and so many players putting in mighty swings in rapid succession, fatigue was certainly an issue. Frazier powered through, hitting a grand total of 39 home runs, the same amount as Pederson. He just did a better job of spreading his out.
Pederson may have come up just short, but the exciting young center fielder still put on quite a show of his own. Here’s a look at the 23-year-old’s 487-foot home run:
Pederson, with his athletic frame (6’1″, 215 lbs) and soft features, may not look the part of a home run hero, but he does carry the bat of one.
ESPN Insider’s Buster Olney has more: “Howie Kendrick notes that Pederson swings one of the biggest bats in baseball, 34 ounces and 34 inches, the sort of club that Alfonso Soriano and Rafael Furcal have swung but few others do. Ethier uses Pederson‘s bat in batting practice, but will use a lighter bat during games.”
Pederson was brilliant in his semifinal performance against Albert Pujols, who’s enjoying a resurgent year with the Los Angeles Angles. Pujols gave Pederson props after his scintillating display, per SB Nation:
The heavy lumber he’s towing certainly helps him hit balls harder and farther than just about anyone else in the majors. Hopefully, he’s invited back to the Home Run Derby with his penchant for hitting towering four-baggers.
The new format seems to be an inarguable win for the event and All-Star Weekend as a whole. Deadspin’s Kevin Draper even noted the weather conspired to ratchet up the competition:
Major League Baseball might have also gotten an assist from the weather. Worried about encountering late night thunderstorms, they shortened rounds from five minutes to four. The event was a bit longer than it should’ve been as it was, and extra time would have exacerbated that. (The distance home runs needed to be hit to achieve bonus time was also reduced from 475 feet to 425, meaning players pretty easily got it, but even so rounds were at least 30 seconds shorter than they otherwise would have been.) Some hitters were also noticeably fatigued near the end of their rounds, and it would’ve been worse if they were longer.
If there are tweaks to make, MLB might do well to keep the time limits the same as they were this year instead of reverting back to the original plan. This would be especially helpful if there were a player who didn’t take well to the format and was having a tough time hitting them out (although that certainly didn’t apply to anyone participating this year).
The distance-bonus rule seemed to be a rather easy target for hitters to reach. A happy medium might be found at 450 feet, lest 475 feet prove too much for all but Pederson, Frazier and (hopefully, someday) Giancarlo Stanton.
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