Anyone stay up to watch the whole thing?

 

Cool to see Morneau again at TF, it was a nice moment.

 

Cepedes was beastly, and it's too bad that Stanton didn't make it to the Final Round, he looked dialed at the start.

 

Man, that was really long. I thought it would be better in this format, but I still think it takes too much time for everyone to hit.

I agree that it takes to long. They should drop a round. Just take the top 2 from each league after the 1st round. Have the Semi-finals and then the AL vs NL Finals. That way you eliminate the bye and don't have Bautista and Stanton sitting for 2 hours between rounds.

I was there for the whole thing. You guys are right, it took a while. There was the one shot that Stanton blasted into the upper deck. That was an absolute laser.

 

I think that giving the leaders a bye screwed them up. During the first round, I thought we'd see Stanton/Bautista in the final round. I wish we would have seen that.

The new format was better, but the couple tiebreakers pretty much negated the time they saved by going to 7 outs per batter. With the new technology, maybe they should have the tiebreaker be longest home run or total distance so you can save that five to ten minutes on the spot. I also think if you bring your own pitcher, then you shouldn't have an excuse to take more than a couple pitches max. If you picked a bad pitcher that's your own fault.

How many rounds were there? 12? Anything more than 2 is just foolishness.

The rain delay didn't help.

 

I think they could somehow reduce it to 3 rounds at most. I thought the 3rd was the final (didn't listen, just had the video on my laptop) then realized there was a "final round" yet, too. Especially since they also have tie-breakers, it would be nice if they could cut it down at least one round.

 

I had it on until the end but I didn't watch all of it but thought Bautista's 1st round was the most fun.

 

(And every time I looked in, there was a commercial on. I wasn't going to sit and watch this thing from start to finish -- just take in parts of it. )

It amazes me how many pop ups and ground balls there are in the home run derby. Hitting homeruns/ a baseball is hard.

Maybe fewer competitors? It's tricky because it is great to have lots of participants, but on the other hand having ten guys get 7 outs each means a really long first round.

Someone suggested that instead of counting number of home runs to determine the winner they should tally distance.

The MLB Home Run Derby should take on the format of the FSL (minus the secondary fence). The Florida State League gave each participant 3 minutes to hit as many as possible. I would recommend 2 minutes personally. It should however give fans a fast dose of HRs going over the fence and some type of climax as they watch the time run down. I was told it made the derby go faster and kept fans more engaged. A true stamina contest as well.

Someone suggested that instead of counting number of home runs to determine the winner they should tally distance.

 

I believe this suggestion was for the tiebreaker, not overall.

The MLB Home Run Derby should take on the format of the FSL (minus the secondary fence). The Florida State League gave each participant 3 minutes to hit as many as possible. I would recommend 2 minutes personally. It should however give fans a fast dose of HRs going over the fence and some type of climax as they watch the time run down. I was told it made the derby go faster and kept fans more engaged. A true stamina contest as well.

 

Dang - that does sound exciting! I think if there's a clock, though, I would recommend a pitching machine. As cool as it is for players to get their pick of whomever they want to throw them BP, I think with the time element added a pitching machine would make the contest more fair to each contestant.

It just makes it that more important to get the right guy to throw to you. These guys have coaches who throw 5 million BP balls a day. They can find someone to groove some to them for 2 minutes while remaining accurate. It would probably be better pitching if the pitcher didn't have to wait 20 seconds in between each pitch for towel wipe downs; glove adjustments; and Gatorade breaks.

I just think a human pitcher might get tense trying to beat a clock and throw wildly or ineffectively. A pitching machine could just chuck baseballs for two minutes on a timer and each pitch would be relatively the same as the last one.