Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
Are you one of those people who worries about how the Home Run Derby ruins players swings. Do you actively root against players from your favorite team taking part in the annual event?
If so, I'm here to help you realize this angst isn't worth your time. Please stop doing it to yourself. There's no correlation between taking part in the Home Run Derby and any performance after, good or bad.
There are bound to be ebbs and flows during the marathon that is the 162-game regular season, especially given how hard it is to be a successful hitter at the big-league level these days. The pitchers throw harder than ever and have more breaking pitches than ever. Teams are smarter than ever at defensive positioning, not to mention the better infield arms means the players can play deeper and that increases their range.
Plus, the big concern you'll hear from the masses lamenting the Home Run Derby is that it'll mess up a player's swing because he's going to try and hit a home run every time. I've got news for you: the power hitters are already doing that. We've all heard color commentators say a guy is "looking dead red" on 2-0, 3-1 or 3-0 counts. Players are taught from a young age that you are looking to do major damage on that pitch. These are batting practice pitches.
How in the world would swinging for the fences in batting practice ruin the swing of someone like Pete Alonso?
One of my favorite stories, and I'm sure I've told it before, is when someone asked Jose Bautista before the 2014 Derby what it would be like to try and hit a home run with every swing. He kind of laughed and said something along the lines of "that's what I do every swing anyway." Another player, who I won't identify lest he be accused of only trying to hit homers instead of being a "complete" hitter, told me that he tried to hit a home run on "at least 90%" of his swings.
It's nonsense, really, to think participating in a glorified batting practice session would do anything to alter the approach of a professional hitter when compared to an actual game situation. It's just a convenient excuse to try and explain away a slump that coincidentally comes right after the Derby.
But what about when a player gets hot coming out of the All-Star break? Do we ignore that? How about when he's doing basically the same thing as before? Ignore it again?
We've already gotten a pretty good sampling since this year's Derby to show how all over the place things can be.
Worse than first half
Adolis García - It's been a season for forget for one of the 2023 postseason heroes and it's gotten worse since he took part in the Derby in his home park. After hitting .211/.277/.405 in the first half, he's at .188/.235/.266 since. Again, he's been bad all year. The Home Run Derby didn't do it.
Marcell Ozuna - After a .303/.379/.581 first half, Ozuna has slashed .262/.319/.539 since the break. It's a drop, sure, but it isn't all too drastic and look at that slugging percentage. Plus, he's a career .271/.332/.475 hitter and was having one of the best seasons of his career before the All-Star break, meaning it was reasonable to expect a course correction in the second half.
About the same
Alec Bohm - He hit .295/.348/.482 before the All-Star break and has hit .318/.384/.485 since. I think it could be argued that he's been better, but he only has one home run and the slugging change is negligible, so I'm content to be conservative and put him here.
Gunnar Henderson - It's tougher to place Henderson here than others. He's hitting .309 post-break compared to .287 before it. He has a better on-base percentage as well. He also only has one home run and has lost over 140 points in slugging percentage. He certainly isn't slumping and if you only looked at average he's been way better, but the slugging deficit means we can't say he's actually been better.
Better than first half
Pete Alonso - Alonso has done this thing five times, so it's kind of irrelevant, but I have seen some people on social media proclaiming that he's been terrible since the Derby. Only...he's been demonstrably better. He has a similar average (it's actually a tick higher) in the second half while his OPS is .892 compared to a first-half OPS of .772.
Teoscar Hernández - The winner of the 2024 Home Run Derby took a ton of swings that Monday night. He's been better since. He slashed .261/.327/.475 with 19 homers in 95 games before the break. In 20 games since, he has six homers with a .313/.370/.642 line. It didn't ruin him, nor his fellow finalist, who we'll get to below.
José Ramírez - As usual, Ramírez played like an MVP-caliber guy in the first half, albeit a top-10 MVP finisher type instead of seriously pushing for the top. Since taking part in the Derby, he's been out of his mind. He hit .271 in the first half and is hitting .344 since. He slugged .518 before the break and is slugging .703 since. If this is his version of a post-Derby slump, does that mean we should encourage everyone to take part?
Bobby Witt Jr. - Witt was an MVP candidate at the All-Star break and then came within a few feet of tying for the Derby title in the finals against Hernández. He hit .323/.369/.558 before that Derby. Since then, he's hit .452/.494/.740. He just posted one of the Julys we've ever seen. I think he was fine to take part in that event. Don't you?
Also, did you notice that half the field is having a better season since the Home Run Derby than before while only two have been worse? Hmmm ...
Yes, I realize that the second-half numbers are a very small sample of less than a month, but isn't that the point? If a player's swing would be messed up from the Derby, you'd see it immediately, not after he was hot for 15 games. It's almost as if streaks and slumps happen over the course of 162 games, Home Run Derby or not.
