MLB reportedly moving Home Run Derby back to swings-based format

What happened

Major League Baseball is reportedly abandoning the timer format for the Home Run Derby and returning to a swings-based structure for the first time in more than a decade, per Evan Drellich and Johnny Flores Jr. of The Athletic. The league has not made any announcement about the change.

According to The Athletic, hitters would receive 20 swings in the first round and 15 swings apiece in the semifinal and final rounds. The format carries one notable wrinkle: a round cannot end on a home run. If a contestant connects on his 20th swing of the first round, he would continue swinging until a non-home-run result closes the round — meaning a hot hand at the end of a round gets to keep going, which is either a thrilling escalation or a logistical footnote depending on your relationship with extra-inning baseball.

Why it matters

The timer has governed the Derby since 2015, when MLB introduced it in what The Athletic describes as an effort to keep things moving. Before that, the format was built around "outs" — any swing that did not produce a home run counted against a hitter's total, which encouraged contestants to be extremely selective about when they chose to swing. The reported new structure is not a full return to that original setup, but per The Athletic it would represent the most significant change to the Derby format since that 2015 overhaul.

The distinction matters for how the event actually plays out on the field. Under a timer, the strategic variable is pace: how quickly can a hitter reset, how many swings can he generate in the allotted window, and can he manage fatigue across rounds? Under a swings-based format, the calculus shifts. Each swing carries discrete weight. A hitter cannot manufacture volume by swinging faster; he gets 20 looks in the first round and 15 in the later rounds, full stop — except, of course, for that end-of-round continuation rule, which reintroduces a small element of momentum management at precisely the moment a round is supposed to be closing.

The old "outs" system rewarded patience to a degree that occasionally made the event feel like a negotiation rather than a spectacle. A hitter could stand in the box, take a pitch he didn't like, and absorb the out without much consequence if he had outs to spare. The reported swing-count format removes that particular brand of deliberation while still giving each contestant a defined, finite opportunity — a middle path between the original structure and the timer era. Whether that balance lands well with audiences is a question the format itself will eventually answer, but the reported design suggests the league is trying to preserve both the urgency of a countdown and the clarity of a fixed number of chances.

It is worth sitting with what the timer era actually changed. Pace of play has been a recurring preoccupation across baseball's programming decisions, and the 2015 switch was consistent with that broader instinct. A timer meant the event moved on a predictable clock regardless of how a particular hitter was faring. The tradeoff, which the reported change implicitly acknowledges, is that a timer also means the event moves on regardless of whether anything interesting is happening — a cold stretch of swings burns the same seconds as a hot one. A swing-count format, by contrast, compresses the drama into a known number of attempts and lets the end-of-round continuation rule serve as a natural release valve when a hitter is genuinely locked in.

Where the club stands

The Phillies are 88-74 (.543), second in the NL East, 6 games back, and eliminated from the division race. They carry a one-game winning streak into a three-game home series against the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park. Aaron Nola is the probable starter for Thursday, June 18, against Sean Manaea. The series continues Saturday, June 20, with Cristopher Sánchez scheduled opposite Freddy Peralta, and closes Sunday, June 21, with Zack Wheeler facing David Peterson.

A home series against a division rival is exactly the kind of stretch where midsummer programming sits in the background of the clubhouse calendar. Whether any Phillies hitter factors into the Derby field is not reported.

For a club that is eliminated from the division race but still 88-74, the wild card picture is the operative context for every game in this stretch. Three games against the Mets at home, with Nola, Sánchez, and Wheeler cycling through, represents a meaningful block of the schedule. The Derby format is a story that will develop on its own timeline; the Citizens Bank Park series is happening now.

What we don't know yet

MLB has not made any announcement about the format change, so the specifics reported by The Athletic — the 20-swing first round, the 15-swing semifinal and final, the end-of-round continuation rule — remain unverified at the league level. It is also not reported when any announcement might come, which participants have been invited or are expected to take part, or whether additional rule modifications accompany the swing-count structure.

The Athletic's report does not address how tiebreakers would be handled under the new format, whether the continuation rule applies in all rounds or only the first, or what the event's broadcast structure might look like under the change. Those details, if they exist, have not been reported.

What to watch

The obvious follow-up is any league-level communication addressing what The Athletic has reported. Once the format is formally in place — if it is — the secondary question becomes participant selection: which hitters are invited, and how the swing-count structure shapes the conversation around who is best suited to compete under it. A format built around a fixed number of swings rather than a running clock rewards a different kind of preparation and a different kind of hitter profile, at least in theory. That conversation will be worth having once the format is no longer just a report.

For the Phillies, the more immediate watch item is the Mets series beginning Thursday. A club that is 88-74 and eliminated from the division race is playing for wild card positioning, and a three-game home set against a division opponent carries real weight in that context. Aaron Nola on Thursday is the first piece of that puzzle, with Sánchez and Wheeler to follow across the weekend.

The Derby format, meanwhile, is a story that will develop on its own timeline — one that, per The Athletic, will apparently be measured in swings rather than seconds for the first time in more than a decade. Twenty of them in the first round, fifteen thereafter, and however many extra it takes to end on a miss.