“Why is the opposing manager calling me?” Alonso remembered the thought. He quickly found out. Snitker was preparing to manage the National League All-Star team and had an important question, based on a first-time, fan-friendly rule change. If the score was even after nine innings in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game 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 guy,” Alonso recalled telling him. “I think it’s fun. I think it will be a great event if that happens.” Alonso was unaware of the new format, in which three players from each league take three swings each to decide the final outcome. He wasn’t alone in discovering what might be on deck. “Would that actually happen?” Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton said. “This is news to me.” With the All-Star Home Run Derby always popular the night before the game, Major League Baseball decided to make a slugging showcase part of the Midsummer Classic. And no doubt, now many fans will want to get a draw, just to see another release of longballs. The players too. “Do they do that? That would be fun,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We got Pete Alonso and Ronald (Acuña Jr.), so I like our chances.” The provision that paves the way for innovation was buried in Exhibit 13 of the memorandum of understanding that settled MLB’s March 10 lockout. Alonso has 24 home runs, third in the NL, and had won the Home Run Derby twice going into Monday’s game. The tiebreaker rules, obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, state that “the manager of each league’s All-Star team shall select three players on his team’s active roster who have agreed to participate in the All-Star tiebreaker, if applicable . an alternate player from his active roster who has agreed to participate in the All-Star tiebreaker, if necessary due to injury in a tiebreaker selection. an All-Star team coach who will throw batting practice during the All-Star tiebreaker. and an All-Star team to catch during the All-Star tiebreaker.” [brightcove videoID=6309695653112 playerID=JCdte3tMv height=360 width=640] The game would be stopped briefly after the ninth inning “to allow the grounds crew to reconfigure the field into an arrangement suitable for the tiebreaker.” In the tiebreaker, “each player may take an unlimited number of pitches without counting toward his swing total. Players on each team may bat in any order during the All-Star tiebreaker. provided, however, that the batters from each team shall alternate.” As the visiting team, the AL would send a hitter to bat first and players from each league would alternate. “Once all six tiebreaker picks have completed their shifts, 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 home number after the tiebreaker, each manager will select one tiebreaker option to participate in another round in which the tiebreaker option from each team makes three changes to break the tie. The above-mentioned head-to-head format will continue until the tie is broken.” The three balls selected by a league for the tiebreaker may not be replaced unless injured or to protect the player’s health. The All-Star Game has gone to extra innings 13 times since it began in 1933, the last two going 10 innings in both 2017 in Miami and 2018 in Washington. Teams short on pitchers has become a problem as managers try to get most pitchers in the game until the ninth inning, and the 2002 game in Milwaukee ended in a 7-7, 11-inning tie when there were no pitchers left. A few years ago, MLB was going to try the automatic runner at second base if the All-Star Game went into extra innings. Thanks to Snitker, Alonso was ready to go with a new way to decide who wins the All-Star Game. “He had to tell me about the Home Run Derby, because I didn’t know,” Alonso said.
