Kyle Schwarber leads NL past AL in All-Star Game’s first home run swing-off
By RONALD BLUM AP Baseball Writer
ATLANTA — Kyle Schwarber was nervous.
He had played in Game 7 of the World Series, homered for the United States in the World Baseball Classic.
But he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off.
No one had.
“That was like the baseball version of a shootout,” the Philadelphia Phillies slugger said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Tampa Bay’s Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after a 6-6 tie Tuesday night in which it wasted a six-run, seventh-inning lead.
Schwarber earned the MVP award, going 0 for 2 with a walk as the NL won for the second time in its last 12 tries.
“It will be interesting to see where that goes,” said AL manager Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees. “There’s probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it’s in some regular season mix. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start talking about it like that.”
Concerned about running out of pitchers in an era where no All-Star throws more than one inning, Major League Baseball and the players’ association made the change in 2022.
In baseball’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shootout, the game was decided by having three batters from each league take three swings each off of coaches.
Boone picked the Athletics’ Brent Rooker, Seattle’s Randy Arozarena and Aranda on Monday, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts picked Arizona’s Eugenio Suárez, Schwarber and the New York Mets’ Pete Alonso for the NL. Because Suárez was hit on the left hand by a fastball in the eighth inning, the NL turned to its alternate, Miami’s Kyle Stowers.
Players from both teams stood outside their dugouts, some already in street clothes, jumping and shouting after each long ball from their side. Yankees coach Travis Chapman threw to the AL batters and Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel to the NL hitters.
Rooker put the AL ahead by homering on his last two swings, and Stowers hit one. boosted the AL lead to 3-1.
Ebel had thrown BP to Schwarber two years ago at the WBC.
“He asked me right before, he was like, where do you want it?” Schwarber recalled “I’m like, just middle. And he’s like, I gotcha.”
He took two pitches then deposited the third just over the center-field fence. Schwarber took another, then hit a drive over the right-center bullpen. After letting two more go by, he dropped to a knee while pulling the third, craned his neck and held his bat it the air as the ball landed in the fourth row of the Chop House seats.
“I didn’t hit it, obviously, my best, but I was thinking I got enough of it,” Schwarber said. “I was just kind of down there, hoping, saying: go, go, go. And it went. And it was awesome.”
Aranda followed with a fly well short of the center field warning track, drove a pitch about a foot shy of the top of the right 0field wall and hit an opposite-field pop that dropped in medium left.
Alonso, a two-time Home Run Derby champion, didn’t have to bat and patted Schwarber on the head as fireworks went off at Truist Field.
“I felt like a closer, like a closer going into a game,” said Alonso, who began warming up in a batting cage when the AL tied the score in the ninth inning. “And then it’s like, wait, the guy in the field got a double play to end the inning. You’re not going in. I was ready for it, but I’m glad Schwarbs did it and we did it the easy way.”
So, what was the final score?
MLB, after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau, said in 2022 that All-Star Games ending in a swing-off would be listed as tied, with a notation of the game being decided in a swing-off. MLB’s official postgame notes listed Tuesday’s outcome as a 7-6 NL victory.
Ketel Marte’s two-run double in the first had put the NL ahead, and Alonso’s three-run homer off Kris Bubic and Corbin Carroll’s solo shot against Casey Mize opened a 6-0 lead in the sixth.
The AL comeback began when Rooker hit a three-run pinch homer against Randy Rodríguez in a four-run seventh that included Bobby Witt Jr.’s RBI groundout. Robert Suarez allowed consecutive doubles to Byron Buxton and Witt with one out in ninth, and Steven Kwan’s infield hit on a three-hopper to third off of Mets closer Edwin Díaz drove in the tying run.
Joe Torre, the 84-year-old former Yankees manager, went to the mound for a pitching change in the eighth to take the ball from Shane Smith and hand it to Andrés Muñoz. The Hall of Famer was picked as a coach by current New York skipper Aaron Boone, who managed the AL.
HEAT ON THE MOUND
Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes, the first pitcher to start the All-Star Game each of his first two seasons, struck out Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene in a perfect first that included Aaron Judge’s inning-ending groundout. The 23-year-old right-hander from El Toro High reached 100 mph on four of 14 pitches.
Last year, in Texas, Skenes walked one batter in his scoreless inning, a blip he said “pissed me off” and pushed him to attack hitters for his encore.
“I was throwing every pitch as hard as I could,” Skenes said, “hoping that it landed in the strike zone.”
He admittedly reached back seeking to strike out the side, but Judge grounded out on another 100 mph pitch.
“That’s what the All-Star Game’s for,” Skenes said. “Every hitter’s trying to hit a home run. We’re trying to strike everybody out.”
Milwaukee Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski, a controversial inclusion after pitching in just five major league games, fired nine pitches of 100 mph or more in a one-hit eighth inning 34 days after his major league debut. The 23-year-old righty, added to the NL roster by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, reached 102.3 mph.
There were 21 pitches of 100 mph or more, down from a record 23 last year but up from 13 in 2023, 10 in 2022 and one in 2021.
KERSHAW’S MOMENT
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw relieved Skenes, 14 years his junior, in the second inning.
Seattle slugger Cal Raleigh, Monday’s Home Run Derby champion, welcomed him with a 101.9 mph line drive that Chicago Cubs left fielder Kyle Tucker snagged with a sliding catch.
Kershaw, an 11-time All-Star, then struck out Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. looking at an 87 mph slider on his sixth pitch, prompting Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to emerge from the NL dugout to take the ball from Kershaw and end what could have been the final All-Star Game appearance of his Hall of Fame career.
A legend pick for the game by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, Kershaw, who became the 20th pitcher to record 3,000 career strikeouts earlier this month, delivered a pregame speech in the NL clubhouse.
“We have the best All-Star Game of any sport,” Kershaw said. “We do have the best product. So to be here, to realize your responsibility in the sport is important. And we have Shohei here. We have Aaron Judge here. We have all these guys that represent the game really, really well so we get to showcase that and be part of that is important.
“I just said I was super honored to be a part of it. Thanks for letting me be here, really.”
ROBOT UMPIRE DEBUTS
Raleigh was just as successful with the first robot umpire All-Star challenge as he was in the Home Run Derby.
Seattle’s catcher signaled for an appeal to the Automated Ball-Strike System in the first inning, getting a strikeout for Detroit’s Tarik Subal on San Diego’s Manny Machado.
“You take ’em any way you can get ’em, boys,” Skubal said on the mound.
Four of five challenges of plate umpire Dan Iassogna’s calls were successful in the first All-Star use of the ABS system, which could make its regular-season debut next year.
Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson, a former Thousand Oaks High standout, won as the first batter to call for a challenge, reversing a 1-and-0 fastball from Washington’s MacKenzie Gore in the fifth inning that had been called a strike.
Stowers lost when ABS upheld a full-count Andrés Muñoz fastball at the bottom of the zone for an inning-ending strikeout in the eighth.
Mets closer Edwin Díaz earned a three-pitch strikeout against Arozarena to end the top of the ninth on a pitch Iassogna thought was outside.
Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk used ABS to get a first-pitch strike on a 100.1 mph Aroldis Chapman offering to Brendan Donovan with two outs in the bottom half.
“The fans enjoy it. I thought the players had fun with it,” said Roberts, who earned his first All-Star win as NL manager. “There’s a strategy to it, if it does get to us during the season. But I like it. I think it’s good for the game.”
Skubal had given up Ketel Marte’s two-run double and retired the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman on a groundout for his first out when he got ahead of Machado 0-and-2 in the count. Skubal threw a 89.5 mph changeup, and Iassogna yelled “Ball, down!”
Raleigh tapped his helmet just before Skubal tipped his cap, triggering a review by the computer umpire that was tested in spring training this year and could be adopted for regular-season use in 2026.
“Obviously, a strike like that it was, so I called for it and it helped us out,” Raleigh said.
An animation of the computer analysis was shown on the Truist Park scoreboard and the broadcast. Roberts laughed in the dugout after the challenge.
“I knew it was a strike,” Machado said.
Skubal doesn’t intend to use challenges during regular-season games if the ABS is put in place. He says he’ll rely on his catchers.
“I was joking around that I was going to burn two of them on the first balls just so that way we didn’t have them the rest of the game,” he said. “I’m just going to assume that it’s going to happen next year.”
Before the game, Manfred indicated the sport’s 11-man competition committee will consider the system for next season.
“I think the ability to correct a bad call in a high-leverage situation without interfering with the time of game because it’s so fast is something we ought to continue to pursue,” Manfred said.
ABS decisions may have an error of margin up to a half-inch.
“Our guys do have a concern with that half inch, what that might otherwise lead to particularly as it relates to the number of challenges you may have, whether you keep those challenges during the course of the game,” union head Tony Clark told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. “Does there need to be some type of buffer zone consideration? Or do we want to find ourselves in a world where it’s the most egregious misses that we want focus in on?”
Manfred sounded less concerned.
“I don’t believe that technology supports the notion that you need a buffer zone,” he said. “To get into the idea that there’s something that is not a strike that you’re going to call a strike in a review system, I don’t know why I would want to do that.”
MLB sets the top of the automated strike zone at 53.5% of a batter’s height and the bottom at 27%, basing the decision on the midpoint of the plate, 8½ inches from the front and 8½ inches from the back. That contrasts with the rule book zone called by umpires, which says the zone is a cube.
“We haven’t even started talking about the strike zone itself, how that’s going to necessarily be measured, and whether or not there are tweaks that need to be made there, too,” Clark said. “So there’s a lot of discussion that still needs to be had, despite the fact that it seems more inevitable than not.”
Manfred has tested ABS in the minor leagues since 2019, using it for all pitches and then switching to a challenge system. Each team gets two challenges and a successful challenge is retained. Only catchers, batters and pitchers can call for a challenge.
“Where we are on ABS has been fundamentally influenced by player input,” he maintained. “If you had two years ago said to me: What do the owners want to do? I think they would have called every pitch with ABS as soon as possible. That’s because there is a fundamental, very fundamental interest in getting it right, right? We owe it to our fans to try to get it right because the players as I talked to them over a couple of years really, expressed a very strong interest or preference for the challenge system that we decided to test.”
Skubal wondered is all contingencies had been planned for.
“If power goes out and we don’t have ABS – sometimes we don’t have Hawk-Eye data or Trackman data. So what’s going to happen then?” he said. “Are we going to expect umpires to call balls and strikes when it’s an ABS zone?”
FREEMAN GETS A HAND
Freeman was removed for Alonso with two outs in the third inning, giving the crowd of 41,702 a chance to cheer a player who spent 12 seasons with the Braves and helped Atlanta win the 2021 World Series title.
Freeman grounded out in the first inning in his lone at-bat.
Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and catcher Will Smith also started for the NL, with Ohtani going 1 for 2 with a single and a run scored. Smith went 0 for 2 with a strikeout and a pop-up.
Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Angels pitcher Yusei Kikuchi were both named All-Stars, but neither pitched because they pitched for their teams over the weekend.
RECREATING AARON’S 715TH HOMER
MLB honored late Hall of Famer Hank Aaron by recreating his record-breaking 715th home run through the use of projection mapping and pyrotechnics.
The lights went down at Truist Park and fans stood holding their cell phone lights following the sixth inning. The scene from April 8, 1974 at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was projected on the infield and also shown on the video board.
The high-tech images of Aaron and other players were seen on the Truist Park infield before a blaze of a fireball launched from home plate to signify the homer that pushed Aaron past Babe Ruth’s record of 714 homers.
Aaron’s widow, Billye Aaron, stood and waved as the cheers from the sellout crowd of 41,702 grew louder.
NL players warmed up for the game in batting practice jerseys with Aaron’s No. 44 on the back
One year ago, MLB celebrated the 50th anniversary of Aaron’s homer with announcements for a new statue at Baseball’s Hall of Fame and a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.
Also, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred helped honor Aaron in Atlanta last year by joining the Braves in announcing the $100,000 endowment of a scholarship at Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Aaron’s home state of Alabama.
Manfred noted the Henry Louis Aaron Fund, launched by the Braves following Aaron’s death in 2021, and the Chasing the Dream Foundation, created by Aaron and his wife were designed to clear paths for minorities in baseball and to encourage educational opportunities.
Aaron hit 755 home runs from 1954-76, a mark that stood until Barry Bonds reached 762 in 2007 during baseball’s steroid era.
Aaron was elected to the Hall in 1982. A 25-time All-Star, he set a record with 2,297 RBIs. He continues to hold the records of 1,477 extra-base hits and 6,856 total bases.
STYLING
Teams were back in their regular-season club jerseys – whites for the NL, mostly grays for the AL – after four years of special All-Star uniforms that were much criticized.
New York Yankees infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. arrived in a Valentino smoking jacket and Christian Louboutin shoes. Instead of having players line up on the foul lines as they were introduced, they walked to a four-level red podium stretching across the infield dirt with flashing lights, smoke a DJ and dancers.
