LOS ANGELES – Pete Alonso was at the Atlanta Truist Park visitor club last week when an attendee made a puzzling request: the New York Mets batter would receive a call from the Atlanta Braves skipper, Brian Snitker?
“Why does the opposing manager call me?” Alonso remembered thinking.
He quickly found out. Snitker was preparing to manage the National League All-Star team and had an important question, based on a change of rules for the first time, friendly for fans.
If the score was even after nine innings in the All-Star Game Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, Snitker asked, would Alonso participate in the new Home Run Derby tiebreaker that would decide the winning team?
“I’ll be your man,” Alonso recalled telling him. “I think it’s fun. I think it’s going to be a big event if that happens.”
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Alonso was unaware of the new format, in which three players from each league made three swings each to decide the final result. He wasn’t the only one to figure out what might be on deck.
“Would that really happen?” said Yankees batsman Giancarlo Stanton. “This is news to me.”
Snitker also chose Ronald Acuna Jr. of Atlanta and Kyle Schwarber of Philadelphia for the National League, while Dusty Baker of Houston selected Julio Rodriguez and Ty France of Seattle along with Kyle Tucker of Houston for the AL.
With the always popular Home Run Derby the night before the game, Major League Baseball decided to make a slugging showcase part of the Midsummer Classic.
And no doubt, many fans will now go in favor of the tie, only to see another long ball throw.
Players, too.
“Are they doing it? It would be fun,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We have Pete Alonso and Ronald, so I like our opportunities.”
The disposition that paves the way for innovation was buried in Exhibit 13 of the Memorandum of Understanding that resolved the MLB blockade on March 10th.
Alonso has 24 homers, third in the National League, and had won the Home Run Derby twice in a row before Monday’s competition.
The tiebreaker rules, obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, state that “the coach of the All-Star team in each league will select three players from his team’s active list who have agreed to participate in the All-Star tiebreaker, if if applicable, an alternate player on his active roster who has agreed to participate in the All-Star tiebreaker, if necessary due to an injury in a tiebreaker selection, an All-Star coach who will perform batting training during the All-Star tiebreaker, and an All-Star. Star team bullpen receiver who will catch during the All-Star tiebreaker. “
The game would stop briefly after the ninth inning “to allow field personnel to reconfigure the field with a proper disposition for the tiebreaker.”
In the tiebreaker, “each player can make an unlimited number of throws without counting the total of his swing. The players on each team can hit in any order during the All-Star tiebreaker; however, the batters on each team take turns. “
As a visiting team, the AL would first send a batter to the baptism and the players in each league would alternate.
“Once all six tiebreaker selections have completed their swings, the team with the most home runs will be declared the winner of the All-Star Game,” the rules state. “In the event that the teams have the same number of home runs after the tie, each coach will select a tiebreaker selection to participate in another round in which each team’s tiebreaker selection makes three changes to break the tie. The header format will continue until the tie is broken. “
The three batsmen chosen by a league for the tiebreaker cannot be replaced unless they are injured or to protect the health of the player.
The All-Star Game has made 13 additional entries since it began in 1933. The last two times, it went to 10 entries in 2017 in Miami and 2018 in Washington. Teams running out of pitchers have become a problem as coaches try to get the most pitchers in the game in the ninth inning, and the 2002 game in Milwaukee ended in a 7-7 draw and 11 tickets when no pitchers were available.
A couple of years ago, MLB was willing to test the auto runner at second base if the All-Star Game went to extra innings.
Thanks to Snitker, Alonso was ready to change to a new way of deciding who wins the All-Star Game.
“He had to talk to me about the Home Run Derby stuff, because I didn’t know it,” Alonso said.