New Home Run Derby Format

So they've finally ditched the AL vs. NL format for the Home Run Derby.  Can the team captains thing be far behind?  Please!

At least they're trying to make the Home Run Derby better.  I give them credit for that.  And I've got to say, I do kinda like the new format.  Whether it'll make the Derby any shorter remains to be seen though.  If it took nearly three hours with eight guys, will they hit the magic number now that they've added two more?

The Home Run Derby wasn't just long, it was getting boring.  They had to do something.  And they've tweaked the format enough to make it a little more interesting.  It sure beats the year they did the international thing to promote the World Baseball Classic, too.

Probably the biggest change is that instead of four players per league there will now be five, and the number of outs per player per round has been reduced from 10 to 7.  This is probably MLB's way of acknowledging that the Derby is indeed too long.  One way to make it shorter is reducing the number of outs in each round.  While I would've preferred dropping it to five, this is a reasonable method of splitting the difference.  It'll also eliminate (hopefully) the guys who hit early having to sit around for an hour and a half before going again.  Likewise, guys who hit late and advance won't have to take 20 swings in a relatively short amount of time anymore.

But my favorite element of the new format is the bracket.  How many times in the past couple years has it been AL vs. AL in the finals?  Well, now we're guaranteed to have one finalist from each league, which is really the way it should be.  Instead of the top four guys regardless of league advancing to the second round, it's the top three from the NL and the top three from the AL.  Seeds 2 and 3 then meet in the second round to see who faces No. 1 in the semifinals, and the two semifinal winners, one per league, will meet in the finals.

While this represents a good change, I'd still like to see more.  I've never really been a fan of the whole "team captain" concept since they introduced it.  They normally pick someone from the home team, but this year's captains are Jose Bautista of the Blue Jays and Troy Tulowitzki of the Rockies, who said he might pick teammate Justin Morneau, a former Twin (and former Derby winner).

I get why they did it, and it certainly has built camaraderie between the participants, but it seemed like an unnecessary gimmick then and it still does now.  I also don't like having non-All-Stars participate in the Home Run Derby.  Sure, last year Yoenis Cespedes, who wasn't an All-Star, ended up winning the whole thing, but it's weird to see a guy who's not on the All-Star Team wearing the All-Star jersey like all the players who are.  At the very least, if you're going to let players who aren't on the All-Star team be in the Home Run Derby, don't let them wear the league jersey.  That should be reserved for All-Stars.

Speaking of the league jerseys, this year's are far better than last year's.  Seeing as orange isn't one of the Twins' colors, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.  The AL's red and the NL's blue, except the back is the opposite color.  I don't know when this trend started or how it caught on, but it doesn't look good.  And it's confusing.  But since the front of the jerseys is nice (and I'm worried about next year in Cincinnati, where it'll be red and some other color), I'll give them a pass.

One other plus is that the AL and NL league hats appear to be gone.  Maybe it was those hideous Montreal Expos monstrosities from last year that finally tipped them over the edge, but the hats that match the jerseys are done.  How do I know this?  Because the MLB.com Shop currently has blue hats with the All-Star Game logo for every NL team and red hats with the All-Star Game logo for every AL team on its site.  So, it looks like now we've got Home Run Derby hats to go along with the Fourth of July and Memorial Day hats.

Even though I have my own well-documented problems with the Fourth of July and Memorial Day and camouflage hats, this still represents a slight improvement over the team hats that matched the All-Star jerseys.  Although my preference would be going back to when the guys in the Home Run Derby wore their regular hats, with the logo on the side, and their All-Star jersey.  (I know that'll never happen though.  Not since MLB discovered that they can sell All-Star hats for $35 apiece and people will buy them.)

Who knows how the jersey/hat combos will end up looking on the actual field and how the Home Run Derby will play out in this new format?  I give MLB credit for trying to change with the times, though.  This is the season that saw the introduction of video replay and the implementation of the Buster Posey Rule.  Why not tweak the Derby format while you're at it?  If it doesn't work, they can always go back to the old way.  Or try something completely different.  (I do like the relay idea some guys suggested in the comments section.)