The Major League Baseball Home Run Derby Monday night has no value in and of itself. There may be some folks over the age of 10 who enjoy the spectacle, and the Kansas City and MLB baseball business interests will surely enjoy the gate take and television coverage. But as a sporting event, it holds no competitive value whatsoever.
Actually, that's not quite right. The Derby, while providing no real gain, actually does have some value. It just happens to be the negative value of participants' performance in the second half of the season tailing off.
1998 Jim Thome
Before the Derby: .326 average with 23 homers in 83 games
After the Derby: .221 average with 7 homers in just 40 games
2003 Jim Edmonds
Before the Derby: .303 average with 28 homers in 88 games
After the Derby: .214 average with 11 homers in 49 games
2011 Jose Bautista
Before the Derby: .334 average with 31 homers in 84 games
After the Derby: .257 average with 12 homers in 65 games
Of course, those are just anecdotal examples of a largely-held belief. For every one of those, you can find a 2006 Ryan Howard, who not only topped his 30 first-half homers with 31 in the second half, he also raised his average from .278 in the first half to .355 in the second.
In order to really test the theory of Derby-as-second-half-performance-killer, we need to step out of the anecdotal and see what the data really shows. To do this, I broke down every participant in every Home Run Derby since 1997. That came up to a total of 126 combined player seasons by 78 different players. The list includes the famous (Ken Griffey, Jr., David Ortiz), the infamous (Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire), and the obscure (John Jaha).
One of the first things that stood out was that of the 126, only eight played fewer than 50 games in the second half and only 15 played fewer than 60. That would seem to be a pretty good indication that the Home Run Derby isn't highly correlated with DL-causing injuries.
As for performance, the story starts tilting against the Derby participants:
* 83 of the 126 saw their batting average decrease post-Derby.
* 86 saw their slugging percentage drop.
* 85 saw their home run rate decrease.
* 77 saw their strikeout rate increase
* 70 saw their strikeout-to-walk ratio increase.
There were two sub groups I wanted to take a more specific look at: those players who actually hit a lot of home runs at the Derby vs. those who didn't, and the players older than 30.
* There have been 35 guys since 1997 who have combined to hit 15 or more home runs during the Derby (counting "swing offs"). Of those, 23 saw a batting average decrease and 23 saw a slugging percentage decrease, so basically the same rate as the overall population of Derby participants.
* Of the 53 participants age 30 or older, 32 saw an average decrease and 33 saw a slugging percentage drop. That's actually a slightly better rate than the overall population.
Pretty much any way I sliced the data, the same results showed up: About two thirds of the people involved in the Derby in any given year regressed off their first half performance in the second half.
The next question that popped into my head was whether that was normal for the entire baseball world, not just the Derby participants. But a quick check into MLB-wide splits showed that total batting averages actually increase by a few points in the second half in four of the past five seasons.
So if it's not a league-wide thing, can we really blame the Derby for a higher rate of performance fall-off? The data certainly seems to suggest there's something there. And it's not just 35-year-old Carlos Beltran or whichever of the contestants goes off for 25 or more combined homers tonight that have to worry.
Bautista felt it last year. Will it happen to him again? How about Andrew McCutchen, or Robinson Cano, or newcomer Mark Trumbo? Nobody knows for sure. But chances are of Monday night's eight competitors, six are in for tough few months ahead.
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