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MLB COO Tony Petitti Talks New Home Run Derby Format On Felger & Mazz

BOSTON (CBS) --  It's hard to find anyone who didn't like the new format for Monday night's Home Run Derby.

Instead of the long, drawn out Home Run Derby fans have become used to over the years, MLB sped things up by giving each slugger four minutes to hit as many homers as they could, with some bonus time added for every two blasts over 425 feet.

It led to a dramatic finish with Reds third baseman Todd Frazier winning on a buzzer beater homer, sending the hometown Cincinnati fans into a frenzy.

Tony Petitti, Chief Operating Officer of Major League Baseball, was the man behind the changes, and joined 98.5 The Sports Hub's Tony Massarotti and Jim Murray (in for Michael Felger) to discuss the rule changes.

It all started with a quick conversation Petitti had with soon-to-be Hall of Famer John Smoltz during last year's derby.

"Last year when I was working with MLB Network, we were sitting in a trailer watching the derby with a bunch of the guys who are on-air for the network -- former players. Smoltz said, 'I have an idea for you. This thing would be better with a clock.' That's all he said, it was a quick conversation.

"We brought it up with commissioner [Rob Manfred] after August when he was elected and said, 'I think this thing would be better with a clock, and here are some ideas of how it would work.' We took the idea and put together a proposal. [Executive Director of the Player's Association] Tony Clark really liked the first thing we had with the idea, and the rest was just spent on perfecting it."

Murray said the event felt more like something he would play in a video game, which was music to Petitti's ears.

"That's great to hear, because we got a lot of feedback from people saying not only they loved it, but their kids loved it," he said. "We looked at the components of a lot of things. We know how much people loves brackets in the NCAA... We felt strongly that we had to have a bracket, and then we focused on the timing of it.

"It just makes a lot of sense," Petitti said of the timer. "In the past years there was a lot of reasons to take pitches. That's not necessarily the best presentation, so we took it out of the mix and made it a little more athletic, even a little faster. Like you're talking about, more like a video game."

Players were initially going to get five minutes, but with the threat of storms in Cincinnati on Monday night, it was changed to four minutes Monday afternoon. Petitti said it's a change that will likely stay.

"Sometimes you get to the right place with a little luck," said Petitti. "That threat of rain allowed us to tweak the format and make it better."

Petitti also addressed the pace of play questions that have surrounded baseball the last few seasons, and changes they are exploring in the minor leagues:

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