4 ways the Major Leagues could improve All-Star Weekend

The Cleveland Guardians hosted the All-Sar game in 2021, but 2022 has seen issues continue to crop up with it.

The Cleveland Guardians hosted the All-Star Game in 2021 and it was mostly a success for the city, but it was far from what the league and sport needed. Baseball as a brand has largely been seen as an in-between game, not quite as strict as the NFL, but not nearly as loose as the NBA.

The contracts are guaranteed, like the NBA, something the NFL should be doing, but the MLB doesn’t have the same promotional support for their superstars as the NBA or NFL does. They’re decidedly lacking and are in the area of the NHL in that regard.

The NFL and NBA do a great job maximizing their All-Star games, with the NFL Pro Bowl taking place at the same location as the Super Bowl, just a week before, and the NBA All-Star Weekend being arguably the best in all of sports. Due to this, both brands have really built up their stars, and in turn, built up their audiences.

This is something that needs to change, as the MLB can’t keep wasting the years of their best players. They need to fix the way they promote their players and improving the All-Star Week events is a way to do just that.

We have four ways that the game can improve just that. We were going to have five, but the Home Run Derby to end a tie-breaker at the All-Star Game was one of the original ideas.

Four ways to improve the All-Star Game experience

1. Put the All-Star game at the actual halfway point of the season

This is the issue I have with the NBA as well. The MLB All-Star game is close enough to the mid-way point compared to the NBA (which is more like two-thirds of the way) but in a normal year, the end of June is usually about the mid-way point. Considering more people are at home in June and August in the summer as opposed to July, it would make more sense to capitalize on this before families start traveling for the summer.

2. Give the MLB Draft its own day, separate from everything else, and live from the host city

The inspiration for this article was getting news about the Guardians draft and seeing how many fans were complaining about the draft process. There are too many rounds, to begin with, in the MLB Draft. Not too many prospects for fans to care about. Putting the first four or five rounds on the first day, complete with the prospect hypes and all that goodness would be the way to go, and then do the rest of the draft the next day and have it lead up to the Home Run Derby. This year the draft happened the same night as the last set of games before the break. Only the MLB drafts their rookies during the season, so they need to find a better way of making stars before they arrive in the minors.

3. Change the Home Run Derby to be more fan-friendly

The same issues with the Home Run Derby can be found in the NBA’s Dunk Contest. The best players for those events rarely ever compete in them. To circumvent this issue, do what the Dunk Contest can’t; bring back past winners, even if they’re out of the league, to compete. You can have a bracket of modern stars, and a bracket of past winners. This would allow guys like Albert Pujols to compete or say, a Jim Thome-type, assuming said players have a Home Run Derby to their name.

4. Legend’s All-Star Game the day before the game

Ideally, the All-Star week for baseball would be all seven days of the week, not just the first few. Right now the season only takes a four-day break, usually, but in a perfect world, you’d have the Draft on a Monday, the Celebrity game on a Tuesday, the Home Run Derby on a Wednesday, with the All-Star Game landing on Friday, giving Thursday to a Legend’s All-Star Game. Giving the legends of the game a chance to compete in front of fans would just boost interest, and fan interest. Heck, you could even do a Futures vs. Legends game instead.