ATLANTA – If you’re the sort who enjoys plotting the demise of baseball – and, in a grander sense, Western Civilization – then it all was neatly summed up by one moment in the wee hours at Truist Park.
A line drive striking the faux brick just to the right of a FanDuel advertisement, a crucial moment in a home-run hitting contest intended to pump life in a once culturally-dominant Midsummer Classic that now claws for viability in the attention economy.
A little heavy, eh?
Well, that’s sort of how it felt when this 95th All-Star Game went to extra innings and was decided for the first time by a swing-off, which replaced the mega-roster to ensure there’d be plenty of pitchers for extra innings, which replaced How The Game Once Was, at least until it ended in a tie before a befuddled Bud Selig in 2002.
Yet the game always seems to win, thanks in large part to the stars in the arena that seem to produce spectacular feats, regardless of format. On this night, it was Kyle Schwarber’s three homers in three swings that stood up for a National League “victory” after American Leaguer Jonathan Aranda’s bullet line drive hit brick and not seats. When Aranda followed with a harmless pop fly that sent the NL into a bobbing mass of celebration down the first base line, they were 7-6 victors (4-3 on penalty swings).
Somehow, it all worked out. That could be a theme for an All-Star week that was at times grim and sweaty and confusing and at others fresh and fun. With that, the winners and losers from All-Star Week in the A (or at least Cobb County):
Winners
Tiebreaker swing-off
The various buttons MLB pushes in the Rob Manfred era often serve two purposes: Teeth-gnashing followed by pragmatic acceptance.
It was fascinating to discover that everyone from casuals in your contacts list to superstars on the field had no idea – “I honestly had no clue this was a thing,” says Giants pitcher Logan Webb – what was to come. Yet the swing-off – the derby after the Derby, if you will – has been on the books since 2022.
They just hadn’t had to break the glass yet in case of emergency, and Tuesday that emergency was Robert Suarez and Edwin Diaz blowing a two-run ninth-inning NL lead.
While extra-inning baseball has its charms, there can be a certain death march element to it. And in an All-Star Game, it honestly comes down to leftover pitchers trying to get out batters who hadn’t yet hopped a private jet to their final All-Star break destinations.
Nah, we weren’t exactly “robbed” of drama not seeing Shane Smith and Hunter Goodman clash in the bottom of the 11th, just one scenario had managers not had the freedom to burn all their pitchers before game’s end. And while roughly half the 41,702 in attendance had departed, those that remained were plenty engaged by the oohs and ahhs of the swing-off.
Kyle Schwarber
The baddest dude on the first-place Philadelphia Phillies is seemingly universally respected in the game, and his ability to take three batting practice pitches and put them all in the seats – with a result literally on the line – goes to his superior skill and ability to focus.
That man is a free agent at the end of the year, and his late-night power show, even coming in a fake game, nicely illustrated why he’ll be paid superstar money, and not DH money.
Players who like playing baseball
If the swing-off exposed anything to the casual fan, it’s that the All-Star starters – typically the game’s biggest superstars – have long beaten a hasty path to the airport by game’s end. Hey, they got places to be and money to burn and it is their break time.
That’s why teams lock in their three swing-off participants ahead of time, knowing who will be around in a 10th inning – and no, it almost surely won’t be Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani.
But anytime he’s on the roster, Mets slugger Pete Alonso counts himself in. The two-time Home Run Derby champion is both an avid competitor and a ball enthusiast.
And there’s something of a difference between dudes who both love baseball and are very good at it, and those for whom the latter is the only qualifier.
That’s not to say the players that begged off this All-Star Game – ultimately more than 80 were named to the rosters – don’t love it. Rest is important and unpublicized injuries are very real.
But it never hurts to have stars who want to be here.
“It’s an honor for me,” says Alonso. “Certain guys, if they’re banged up, it’s situational. But I’m healthy and I’m appreciative and it’s a great event. For me, it’s a no-brainer to come.”
Cal Raleigh
Sometimes, a player will have his star-is-born year and back it up at an All-Star Game expected to serve as his platform – think Judge in 2017.
Raleigh roared into the break with an AL record 38 first-half homers, the curiosity of being a switch-hitting catcher outslugging Judge and the best nickname in the game – and backed all of it up.
His Home Run Derby championship was both a compelling tale and a remarkable feat, and gives the game a legitimate star in a Pacific Northwest outpost that too often gets ignored.
Dino Ebel
He might be the greatest batting-practice pitcher of all time, or at least the most decorated. Ebel has been the soft tosser for two Home Run Derby champions – Vladimir Guerrero Sr. in 2007 and Teoscar Hernández in 2024 – and as the clock neared midnight Tuesday he climbed halfway up the Truist Park mound and tossed cookies to Stowers and Schwarber.
Four of the six pitches ended up in the seats.
“Put a ‘W’ next to Dino’s name in the paper,” says Dodgers and NL manager Dave Roberts, whom Ebel serves as third base coach. “Well, there’s no more papers anymore, but Dino should get the win. Absolutely.’
That’s only the half of it. Sunday night, Ebel’s son Brady was drafted 32nd overall by Milwaukee, and he has another lad, Trey, who is a well-regarded prospect for the 2026 draft. Let’s just say mid-July has been very good to the Ebel clan.
Losers
The MLB draft
It remains Manfred’s pet project, and the optics are good holding it in conjunction with All-Star Week. Enough space fillers wearing overpriced Fanatics gear are willing to fill up the couple hundred chairs to create a well-crafted television show. And sliding the draft into the most desirable television slot in the sport – supplanting Sunday Night Baseball for a night – will ensure its ratings will be sufficient even if the in-person product resembles a Potemkin Village.
Yet it’s an undeniable setback that exactly zero prospects showed up all dressed up for the show and ready to grip and grin with Manfred. They certainly have their reasons, be it advisors who prefer they not forfeit leverage with drafting teams, to the greater uncertainty involved with baseball’s draft compared to its NFL and NBA cohorts.
No one wants to get stuck in a green room for a couple hours, especially an 18-year-old whose reps might be haggling over bonus pool money right up to the moment they’d be picked.
Manfred is perhaps the only baseball official who wants to drag the process into mid-July, putting scouting departments, front offices, college coaches and, of course, the players in flux deep into the summer when the whole thing could be done in early June.
Pat McAfee, or whoever decided to loop him into the festivities
That was weird.
What’s usually a pretty rote process – the pregame All-Star press conference where starting pitchers and lineups are announced got a startling charge when McAfee, ESPN’s sleeveless ambassador to the Coveted Young Demographic, was on stage to moderate the session.
It’s tough to fake baseball, and while McAfee did all right, the entire presser was simply bizarre. It helped that Paul Skenes’ presence enabled McAfee to lean into his Yinzer shtick, yet couldn’t save him from mispronouncing Ketel Marte.
And an inquiry from a reporter on baseball’s unexplained decision to move the game back to Atlanta after onerous voting laws were passed – and Roberts’ general abdication of stances on social issues important to Dodgers fans – resulted in McAfee trying to parry the whole exchange.
He was also tapped to intro the participants in that night’s Home Run Derby, which is among ESPN’s most important broadcasts all year. The whole thing smacked of the erstwhile Worldwide Leader signing all its inventory over to McAfee, and MLB eagerly (desperately?) hoping to cash in some of that cultural currency.
The Phillies
Hey, they’re on the clock for the next All-Star Week and the pressure is mounting. The game comes less than two weeks after the country’s Semiquincentennial, and there may not be enough red, white and blue to out-America all the Midsummer Classics that came before it.
Also, Kyle Schwarber is a free agent. As this 95th game showed, some things you just can’t let get away.
