LOS ANGELES (AP) — The All-Star Game showcased what baseball has become — home runs, strikeouts and offense-killing shifts.
The National League didn't have a hit between the first and eighth innings of Tuesday night's 3-2 loss, its ninth in a row.
Four of the five runs scored on long balls. There were 22 strikeouts, including the final three batters on 10 pitches by Emmanuel Clase in a game that lasted 3 hours, 11 minutes despite just 13 hits, five walks, two hit batters and one runner reaching on a error.
Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber and Jake Cronenworth all hit groundouts that might have been hits if not for shifted infields.
Major League Baseball’s Midsummer Classic remains the most-watched all-star game in professional sports, even though it drew record lows in viewership for the fifth time since 2015. The game in Los Angeles averaged 7.51 million viewers on Fox, a decline of 9.7% from last year’s contest in Colorado. The audience peaked at 8.24 million between 9:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. EDT.
The game was the most-watched program on television on Tuesday night and outdrew the other three all-star games that were played in February. The NFL's Pro Bowl averaged 6.69 million on ABC, followed by the NBA and NHL all-star games.