The 2025 MLB All-Star Game rocked. Hard. A stunning comeback by the American League culminated in a 6-6 ballgame after nine innings, which led to an extra innings Home Run Derby where Kyle Schwarber played hero and the National League won after all.
Seemingly no one knew this rule existed until the bottom of the ninth inning, which just added to the fun.
“I saw (Houston Astros closer Josh) Hader getting loose, and I thought, this is better than facing Hader,” Diamondbacks star Corbin Carroll told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.
And I can't disagree with Carroll there; standing in against Josh Hader looks far less fun than standing in against a 60 mile-per-hour meatball.
Overall, the swing-off was a smash hit. Everyone loved it. So let's keep it at the All-Star Game... only. Rosenthal also said in his piece about the All-Stars:
Their consensus: We should never play an extra-inning game again. We should always end games just like that. New York Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said the same thing, seemingly willing to banish the automatic runner on second base forever. The players were joking. We think.
Even if these guys were joking (I'm sure they were), if you told a baseball fan ten years ago that extra innings would start with a runner on second base, would that be so much crazier than an extra-innings home run derby? No! It might be less crazy!
So while I think the players were joking, I'm also somewhat scared of a league that often gets lambasted for not being fun enough seeing something really fun and thinking... let's just do that all the time.
Don't!
MLB extra innings need fixing, but in a different way
If our choices are extra innings that start with a runner on second base or extra innings that are just a Home Run Derby... I guess I'd pick the derby. Luckily our choices aren't just those things, because the secret third option is... playing extra innings like normal, like baseball did for the past 150 years.
I'm pro-change in most areas. I'm ready to implement ABS immediately after seeing it used at the ASG. But we tried the runner-on-second thing and it sucks! So change it back! An important part of experimentation in sports is admitting that sometimes the experiment didn't work. This one didn't, and neither would a home run derby every day. The best part of the derby is that it happens once a year (or twice, apparently) and is a spectacle every time. Don't ruin the fun of the derby by making us watch it in the middle of May in a game between the Nationals and Marlins. I don't know if anyone is seriously considering that, but if they are... please stop.