NEW YORK — Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby is off the clock.
Instead of trying to pile up as many home runs as possible in a certain amount of time, the format used since 2015, each of the eight hitters competing will have 20 swings in the first round of this year’s contest at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park on July 13, Major League Baseball said Thursday.
The change coincides with a switch in broadcaster to Netflix from ESPN, which had televised the event since 1994.
A player who homers on swing 20 will keep on swinging until he doesn’t connect for a long ball. The top four hitters advance, with distance of the longest homer used a tiebreaker.
Hitters will be seeded for the second round, where No. 1 faces 4 and 2 meets 3.