DISCLAIMER
I have no idea what I’m doing here. I can speak with some confidence in DFS and some prop markets, but we have no useful data to use for the HR derby even though people will try to tell you we do. It’s just for fun guesswork while attempting to use a small set of statistics in a way that makes logical sense. I’m just a schlub trying to give my readers some content and have a little bit of fun on a Monday night
TREVOR acted with some malfeasance and went and bombed out a derby preview of his own. He didn’t even consult me before publishing it!
I started reading it and then stopped because I want to do my own without any bias from that jag. But he did a really good job running down the new rules. Aka the old rules. We are BACK to swing counts rather than a timed event.
Here’s Trevor’s article; I have no idea who he picked. I wanted to do my own first before seeing what he said.
First, I’m the data guy, so I give you some numbers.
Park Data
They’re in Philadelphia tonight, hence the two Phillies picks. Here are the dimensions:
It’s long been considered a hitter’s park. Most of these homers are going to sail 50 feet over the fence, but there will be some cheap-o’s too, and a homer here and there can be the difference.
So we can check my park factors:
Left-Handed Hitter HR Park Factor: 102
Right-Handed Hitter HR Park Factor: 100
Slight edge to the lefties. Down the line it’s the same, but there’s a five foot (or so) advantage to lefties if they go down the “alley”.
The lefties: Schwarber, Murakami, Caglianone, Harper, Rice
The righties: Caminero, Walker, Contreras
I would think it foolish to be stuck on saying “I have to take a lefty to win this thing”; the park factor difference really isn’t there. Some of the other park factors might be skewed if they’re doing it wrong. For years now the Phillies pop has been supplied mostly by Harper and Schwarber - so that boosts the numbers if you’re not controlling for the home team’s lineup.
Here’s my contestant data:
So the stamina thing doesn’t matter as much anymore. You don’t have to rip off 30 swings in two minutes or whatever it was. You can chill and catch your breath if you need. That gets rid of the importance of sheer size. But it’s there anyway. Swinging a bat pretty much as hard as you can with all of the lights on you is surely draining, so the big guys get a boost from just having easier power.
Not that any of these guys don’t have easy power. This is a stacked field.
I like looking at the two forms of bat speed there. I did 25th percentile bat speed for the “protective”. This gives you some idea of how much strength these guys have when they’re really not trying to tap into it. So Junior Caminero and Jordan Walker are the standouts there. Pretty incredible that Caminero gets that from being just 6’1’’. He was in this derby last year and finished second to Cal Raleigh. So the experience factor is there, although it’s a totally different set of rules, so that might offset. And that might not matter.
Let’s get into some general rules that I think should exist.
GENERAL RULE #1: RANDOMNESS
It’s one event that happens once a year. There’s no real data on it. Maybe some people will dig deep into it and try to find the answer, but it just doesn’t exist. There’s no solving these things. Even if you have some idea about a thing that correlates with winning it, the data sample is too small for that to be considered true and useful.
GENERAL RULE #2: ODDS
This goes hand-in-hand with rule #1. We all have to admit that it’s largely random. Maybe it’s not entirely random, but at minimum it’s 50% randomness, right? Do we all agree on that?
So what do you do when the winner of a contest is highly influenced by randomness? You fade the chalk!
$100 on Schwarber wins you $400, $100 on Contreras wins you $1500. That’s 3.75x more money to win on Contreras. It Schwarber 3.75x more likely to win this thing? I can’t prove it, I guess, but I don’t think so!
That’s not to say pick Contreras, the longest shot doesn’t ever seem to do well. TYPICALLY though, the longest shot will be some guy you’re like “why is he in the derby exactly?”. Not the case with Conteras who has always put up some eye-popping EVs. He can absolutely win this one.
MAKING MY PICK
I’m never going to bet the favorite in one of these. I mean if it’s like an office or friends pool where you just draft a guy and you have first pick, it makes sense to take the book odds at face value and just do your selection based on those. But I imagine most people are looking for a bet here that considers the odds.
KYLE SCHWARBER +300
I’m never going to bet the favorite. This went perfectly wrong last year as Raleigh won despite him being the first one I scratched off. Read that disaster here and then consider just closing this window and not taking my advice at all.
But good processes fail all the time. Right? That’s how bettors talk. The process was good the result just didn’t show up because of randomness! That’s cope 80% of the time, but there’s truth in it, of course.
I’m not veering away from what I think is sound strategy just because it failed last time. +300 Schwarber is off my board. No doubt the price has something to do with him being from the home team. And I doubt that really makes a difference. Sure, he’ll get more crowd energy than the other guys, but I don’t really believe in that stuff. Intangibles are fake. Or at least they’re fake in whatever way they can be fake to make me right when I say that.
JUNIOR CAMINERO +425
We also certainly have the +425 price on Caminero because he appeared here last year and did so well, coming very close to taking it home. So the betting prices are being influenced by narratives. And you’ll have that because the books set their prices not based on player data but on public sentiment. They have to price these things to give them the best chance of making money. They believe the public will like Caminero, so they put the odds low to be able to handle that bigger volume that might come in.
Caminero is shorter, but I guess that doesn’t matter because of the league-high swing speed. He’s able to generate it even without the extra 5-7 inches that some of the big boys have on him. So we’re not penalizing him for that, but I’m not real interested in betting a guy at +425 when I really believe anybody in the field can win it.
Last year, Caminero was the biggest underdog at +1200. And one year later he’s #2? It’s just a bad price. He can win it, of course he can, he almost did last year and won me a good chunk - but we’re looking at prices here, not players.
+425 Caminero is off my board.
WILLSON CONTRERAS +1400
Makes a lot of sense to like the +1400 on this guy. The bat speed in the data is in the middle of the pack. He’s not at Caminero levels, but he’s well ahead of Murakami and Rice. I would’ve thought Ben Rice would be the big underdog here. But we get +1400 on Contreras, and I like that a lot.
Is he my pick to win it in a vacuum? No, but he’s going to be up there with my favorite bets, if he’s not my favorite.
BEN RICE +850
I don’t think Rice is made for this, bros. His max EV is the worst in the competition, and he’s by far the lowest in bat speed. The guy is an excellent home run hitter mostly because of his phenomenal plate discipline and ability to pull the ball in the air (Yankees Stadium helps, too).
Bat speed doesn’t seem to correlate with winning it. Teoscar Hernandez won it two years ago, and we had Pete Alonso win back-to-back; neither of those guys swings the bat super hard (relative to the other elite power hitters in the league, at least). But it’s not enough data, and it makes sense that the guys with all of the bat speed in the world would be better at sustaining a home run swing through a long night of trying to go deep.
Rice isn’t winning this thing.
MUNETAKA MURAKAMI +500
Only Schwarber and Murakami have a home run rate this year over 7.5%. The real game power is unquestioned with Murakami. But the bat speed really isn’t impressive.
I am tempted to talk about his contact rate, but there’s no way that matters here, right? Just because you whiff 40% of the time against real pitches doesn’t say anything about what you can do in batting practice. Or does it? It does speak to something about control of the bat, right? No, probably not. I won’t go there.
The bat speed on Murakami is not what you’d think for a guy with 20 homers in 60 games. And he’s the third-biggest favorite.
Does narrative street play a part in this? The guy has derby experience in Japan. If that helps, it helps! #Analysis. But I don’t really think it helps. All of these guys have been doing simulations leading up to this, I suppose.
You see how dumb this HR derby analysis gets? You’re just guessing all of the time.
I’m seeing people on X quote hard hit rates as HR derby research. How dumb! How in the world could that correlate with this? It can’t. That’s foolishness.
I’m looking at size, bat speed, and odds mostly exclusively for this. And Murakami doesn’t have it.
BRYCE HARPER +800
He won one of these things back in 2018. And he was at his home park for that one too! But that was prime Harper. He’s old, and he’s lost bat speed even in the last couple of years.
He has a reconstructed elbow, too! I’m not into it. I’m just a narrative hater at the end of the day. I think this price would be worse if this weren’t in Philly, and I’m not willing to believe that matters.
Harper’s protective bat speed is second-worst in the field, too.
I wanted to keep a pretty big pool to spread my money around on, but I’m getting rid of Harper too.
So I’m down to these guys:
Jac Caglianone +700
Jordan Walker +800
Willson Contreras +1400
That gives me only a 37.5% chance of having a winner on my card, which is probably less than ideal. But I like these three the best, and they’re priced to the point where if we spread it on all of them, we’ll have a real win if one of them lucks into the crown.
Jordan Walker +800 has the second-easiest bat speed in the competition. He’s Junior Caminero with five extra inches of height and 30 pounds on the guy. Dude’s a physical freak and I’m surprised by the price we’re getting.
Name value probably matters here, too. Lots of simps are going to be into this thing. And if these guys aren’t playing fantasy baseball this year, they probably don’t really who Jordan Walker is.
The same is true with Jac Caglianone (+700). The big market snotty suits and ties don’t like Kansas City. They get no respect! And Caglianone has not been a good Major League player in his short time since arrival. People don’t know about him, and I think that gives us a more favorable price.
And we’ve already talked about Contreras at +1400. Just too cheap.
MY PICKS
I’m going to take one hundred of the dollars I’ve won from murking people in $1 double-ups this year and spread it around on these three big dogs. If I die, I die.
If they all win at the same time, I’m absolutely balling out of control. Chipotle for MONTHS!
But at worst, I’d get a smooth $200 profit.
Those are my takes. Now let me see what Trevor said…
Okay he took Rice, Murakami, Harper, and Contreras. So we do not agree at all besides in saying that Contreras is a good line.
My article is better though because I used line spacing and highlights. Good luck to you - except that I don’t really mean that unless you’re taking the same dudes as me.