{"id":2505480,"date":"2026-07-17T01:54:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T01:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2505480"},"modified":"2026-07-17T01:54:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T01:54:36","slug":"lets-fix-the-all-star-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/lets-fix-the-all-star-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s fix the All-Star Break"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MLB All-Star Weekend is a mess. You know it, and I know it. The only people who seem to be unaware are those employed by MLB itself. It\u2019s a mish-mash of activities all happening at the same time, just so we can have nothing<\/em> happening on Wednesday and almost nothing happening on Thursday. MLB clearly wants<\/em> All-Star Week to be something of a showstopping event where we make everyone stop and appreciate this great sport simultaneously. But the way they\u2019ve structured it makes it feel like a crowded convention hall where you inexplicably can\u2019t do everything you want to, no matter how hard you try. That simply doesn\u2019t have to be the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And I\u2019m here to tell you how.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Get the draft out of here<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The MLB Rule 4 Amateur Draft occurred over the weekend. This was happening at the same time as various regular-season games, some home run derby announcements, and The Futures Game. MLB has stated in the past that they want their amateur draft to have a similar weight to other professional North American sports such as the NFL, NBA, and NHL. But none of those leagues have their drafts during the regular season for a very good reason: it splits focus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MLB has a problem, though: its draft is unlike the ones used by the NBA and NFL in that players who are drafted by MLB teams are not precluded from refusing to sign a deal and returning to college. This is not something that is controlled by MLB, but rather by the NCAA. And in this case, it increases the bargaining power of young baseball players, and so I am disinclined to see it change. Given that, MLB is best served by holding its draft as close to the end of the College baseball season as reasonable. College baseball ends with the College World Series in late June.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So, my proposal here is to give MLB teams the first Saturday after the College World Series the day off and hold the draft that day. You don\u2019t have to have teams take the time off for the draft if you don\u2019t want to. It\u2019s so unappealing as a television prospect that NBC covered only the first ten picks and then moved to a celebrity golf tournament. MLB itself kicked out media members well before the draft was over, and you could hear them disassembling the set while the final rounds were still occurring. It\u2019s obvious that the MLB draft is never going to have real mass appeal outside of the hardcore fans, but if you really want to try, a special day immediately following the hype of the College World Series and not interfering with the trade deadline is the way to do it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If fitting the entire draft into one day seems unrealistic, then perhaps it could hold the first few rounds on Friday morning or Thursday night, while requiring all teams to play Thursday day games that day. The additional time in between draft periods would give people even more time to work themselves into a lather before seeing how the draft unfolds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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MLB used to have its draft around this time, but moved it later to try to strengthen the lineup of All-Star Week festivities. Weirdly, they didn\u2019t make room for it – they just dropped it on things that were already happening. And it\u2019s had the knock-on effect of making the trade deadline more difficult to navigate as teams focus all of their resources on evaluating the draft instead of potential trades. Moving it up a few weeks would give that period more room to breathe as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This, by the way, is the same logic that led to Thanksgiving being scheduled the way that it is. President Lincoln had declared it the last Thursday of the month, but Franklin Roosevelt moved it to the fourth Thursday of the month to increase the distance between Thanksgiving and Christmas so as to expand the shopping season. (There was some other political wrangling in there, which you can read here<\/a>, but that\u2019s the gist).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Give the Futures Game space to breathe<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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This year, the Futures Game was played on Sunday afternoon at the same time as regular-season MLB games and the second half of the Draft. While, for many, the draft is uninteresting because the players being selected are often years away from contributing to MLB rosters, the players who show up in the Futures Game are almost always far closer to being ready to join their big league clubs. Fans could be interested in it. I know I would be if it wasn\u2019t happening at the same time as everything else. To that end, they have two options. Require all MLB games to be played on Sunday afternoon before the All-Star Break, followed by holding the Futures Game that night, or move the Futures Game to Wednesday evening – the only day during the entire summer without a single baseball event taking place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I can see arguments for either of them, I think I\u2019d lean more toward Wednesday. At least in the short term I think it would draw better ratings from the baseball lifers who always spend all day Wednesday complaining that there aren\u2019t any games. Plus, you go from the hype of the current stars to the future ones. You could even have highly drafted prospects give interviews during the game to make fans who don\u2019t pay attention to the draft more aware of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If it were me, I think I\u2019d make it a free broadcast on MLB.TV and do profiles of players (even, or maybe especially, ones who didn\u2019t quite make the cut of the game itself) instead of commercials between innings. MLB might be giving up some ad money that way, but they would be doing wonders for building fan sentiment. I think it would be more profitable in the long term.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Organize the Home Run Derby<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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I\u2019m not going to use this space to criticize the Netflix broadcast, even though it had a lot to criticize. MLB doesn\u2019t have full control over the broadcast. I don\u2019t remember how bad it has been in previous years, but the announcements of participants leading up to the Derby itself were incredibly weird and disjointed. Junior Caminero was the only known participant for a week. There was no discernible rhyme or reason to either the order or the method of the announcements. Some guys literally just dropped the news on their personal Instagram stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s no way to build hype for an event! MLB needs to figure out its entire field, and they need to do it earlier. Then they need to work with the players on a strategy for announcing it. Which would ideally include a sizzle reel on MLB social media accounts in addition to whatever other outlets they or the players want to use. MLB should also ensure that each team\u2019s next broadcast includes mention of the upcoming Derby and the announced participants so everyone can keep track, even if no one from their team is participating. You shouldn\u2019t have to use social media to know who is going to participate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The rules also need to stop shifting all the time. In a lot of ways, I really liked the format this year. Not having a timer allows viewers to better enjoy each home run (though it would help if the broadcast showed them all\u2026). But whatever format they pick, they need to stick with it for more than a year or two at a time. You can\u2019t build legacy, history, or hype when there\u2019s no real way to compare events between years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There are always complaints about guys getting snubbed and the derby itself taking too long, but I have a solution for both. Let\u2019s have a qualifying round early in the afternoon. MLB can maybe have 10 guys trying to get into the actual derby, but only 6 make it through. Then the derby itself would only have to feature those 6, which would cut at least 30 minutes off the run time. I think the Qualifiers would give guys a chance to acclimate themselves to the event so perhaps we\u2019d be able to go without the one or two absolute duds we seem to get every year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They should also ensure that the team hosting the All-Star Game had at least one participant in the qualifiers because, honestly, the Phillies faithful having a rooting interest gave the event a bit more energy, and I\u2019d like to see that continue. If MLB wanted to give that player a bye through the qualifiers, that would probably be OK. I think I\u2019d be fine either way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finally, MLB should figure out how to incentivize the biggest stars to participate again. It\u2019s kind of wild that we hold this event dedicated to the smashing of dingers, and most, if not all, of the best dinger smashers decide they\u2019d rather not participate every year. It\u2019s not the end of the world; it\u2019s entirely possible we don\u2019t get a cool story like Jordan Walker\u2019s come-from-behind walk-off victory if Yordan Alvarez is participating, but it does seem like it would be in the best interest of the sport.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Anyway, I think if MLB made most or all of those changes, the All-Star Break would be vastly improved. I\u2019d also probably go back to having a special All-Star Announcement show held when no games were being played, but it also wouldn\u2019t be the end of the world if guys were just announced on their team broadcasts as long as we had a ticker running underneath with all the other selectees. Again, the key here is not forcing people to find out via social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Do you think these changes would enhance your experience? Would you make these, or would you do something different?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MLB All-Star Weekend is a mess. You know it, and I know it. The only people who seem to be unaware are those employed by MLB itself. It\u2019s a mish-mash of activities all happening at the same time, just so we can have nothing happening on Wednesday and almost nothing happening on Thursday. MLB clearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2505481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[445712,340874],"class_list":["post-2505480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-kansas-city-royals-analysis","tag-royals-editorials-reactions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Lets-fix-the-All-Star-Break.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505482,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505480\/revisions\/2505482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2505481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}