MLB again making changes to Home Run Derby rules

Fans during the All-Star Home Run Derby at T-Mobile Park.

Major League Baseball announced on Sunday that it will be introducing new rules for the 2024 Home Run Derby that are aimed at slowing down the pace of it.

The rounds will still be timed as they have been in the past (three minutes in the first two rounds; two minutes in the championship round) but there will be a limit set at 40 pitches per round. The goal is to make the pace less frantic than we have seen in recent years when hitters could see as many pitches as possible during their allotted time.

According to ESPN, no hitter saw fewer than 43 pitches in a single round in the 2023 Home Run Derby.

Some players had expressed concern with the frantic pace the previous format was producing because it was so out of the norm from their normal hitting routines and that there was a concern for injury.

Along with the pitch limit rules, it will no longer be a bracket-style head-to-head competition.

Instead, the top four hitters from the first round will advance to the second round, with the top two then advancing to the championship. Ties in the first round will be broken by the longest home run.

All of these rules are still a little overly complicated compared to what the original format used to be.

For more than two decades batters were simply given 10 "outs" in each round, with every swing that did not result in a home run counting as an out. It was not a frantic pace for the hitters, and it also created some drama as you knew when players were down to their final out. The pitch limit might help recreate some of that, but it is still a very different situation.

Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson is the first player to commit to competing in this year's Home Run Derby.

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