The American League, on the strength of back-to-back home runs by Giancarlo Stanton and Byron Buxton, continued its All-Star Game dominance on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium. The AL won the 2022 MLB All-Star Game, 3-2, making it nine consecutive wins over the National League in the Midsummer Classic.
Stanton, who was named All-Star Game MVP, hit a 457-foot, two-run homer off Dodgers righty Tony Gonsolin in the fourth inning. Buxton, the next batter, followed with a 425-foot blast of his own to give the AL a one-run lead that the team would not relinquish.
The National League got off to a strong start. Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw got the start in front of his home crowd and pitched a scoreless first inning (which featured a pick-off of Shohei Ohtani). The NL got two runs in the bottom of the first, thanks to an RBI single from Mookie Betts and a solo homer from Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. The NL had four hits off of AL starter Shane McClanahan, but had just one knock in the final eight innings.
Now for some takeaways from the 2022 All-Star Game.
Stanton and Buxton made history
Thanks to Goldschmidt’s first-inning homer, the NL held a 2-0 lead going into the fourth inning. However, things changed quickly thanks to Giancarlo Stanton of the Yankees and Byron Buxton of the Twins.
With one out and one on, Tony Gonsolin of the host Dodgers presented Stanton with an 0-2 splitter, and Stanton found it to his liking:
That’s a 457-foot crush-job that reached the vicinity of the seats where Stanton used to sit when he’d visit Dodger Stadium as a kid. It also left the bat at 111.7 mph, which, according to Sarah Langs, is the highest Statcast exit velocity ever registered in the All-Star Game.
That tied the game, and Buxton, the very next batter, gave the AL the 3-2 lead with this blast off a 2-1 fastball above the zone:
And we say above the zone, we mean that emphatically:
In tandem, those two circuit clouts made for the first back-to-back homers in an All-Star Game since Alex Bregman and George Springer of the Astros pulled it off in 2018 and seventh overall. Consider the importance of the Stanton-Buxton combo, though, and it’s unprecedented, at least insofar as the Midsummer Classic is concerned:
Not coincidentally, Stanton and Buxton combined for 47 homers in the first half of this season.
We didn’t get to see the new tiebreaker format
Earlier this week, MLB announced that All-Star Game ties would be decided not by extra innings, as has been the practice in the past, but rather by an abbreviated Home Run Derby. In the event of a tie score after nine innings, each team would select three batters, and each of them would get three swings. After all six players have had a chance to bat through three rounds, the team with the highest total will be declared the winner.
Needless to say, this new wrinkle was met with enthusiasm from fans, and many of us were no doubt hoping for a tie on Tuesday night. That didn’t quite happen, though, as the AL preserved their one-run lead over the final five-and-a-half innings.
In the eighth, the NL managed its first hit since the first inning – an Austin Riley single to right off Clay Holmes to lead off the frame – but Holmes recouped to get the next two outs, and Liam Hendriks then came on to strand the potential tying run. In the ninth, Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase struck out the side for the save.
Had we managed a tie, then Ty France, Julio Rodríguez, and Kyle Tucker would’ve swung for the AL, while Pete Alonso, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Kyle Schwarber would’ve gone for the NL in the mini-Derby. Advantage NL, given that they’d have trotted out three actual Home Run Derby participants? Alas, we’ll never know.