Home Run Derby: Examining Chris Berman’s Back-To-Gone Ratio, And Other Statistics

On Monday night, we will be treated to the spectacle that is the Home Run Derby, the glorified random number generator that Bud Selig uses to determine where to steer the giant weather-control zeppelin that hovers just south of the stratosphere. A lot of purists aren’t warm to the prospect of baseball’s commissioner orchestrating rain delays and deadly hurricanes and the like based on a single gimmicky exercise.

Regardless, the Derby itself is a fun-filled, and often unpredictable, affair. Here are three questions I hope we can answer by looking at the stats.

The logic behind this idea has some merit: swinging as hard as you can once isn’t such a big deal; swinging as hard as you can 20 or 30 times in a short period of time is pretty tiring. In 2008, Josh Hamilton set the record for most home runs in a single round with 28. But even though he voluntarily ended his second round early in order to save his energy for the final round, he managed to hit only three into the seats and lose to Justin Morneau.

Since 2001, 13 players have accumulated double-digit figures in the opening round:

It’s unsurprising to find that every single one of them regressed in later rounds, but the rate of regression is really something. This is a first-round average of 14.61 home runs and a second-round average of 4.69 home runs.

Perhaps, in some cases, it’s a matter of a hitter finding his groove, smacking five consecutive pitches into the seats, and falling out of that groove after sitting around and waiting for the next round. I would imagine, though, that fatigue plays at least as large of a role. These hitters are used to swinging hard one to three times in a two-minute span. Surely they can’t suddenly start swinging really hard 20 to 30 times, once every 10 seconds, without losing a little of their power.

In the past, we’ve occasionally seen players decline to participate in the Home Run Derby, fearing that the practice of wildly flailing for the fences would mess up their swing. This, too, makes some sense: a power hitter’s swing is a precisely-calibrated exercise. The movements of his eyes, wrists, arms, hips, and head have been fine-tuned to produce as much power as possible. If you go and rip donuts in your Honda Civic, you might find that your steering column has fallen out of alignment. Same general principle.

This data was culled from the seasons of 10 dudes, so it isn’t the largest sample size. Even if it were, there are so many other factors at hand that it would be somewhat ludicrous to pin the dip in numbers squarely on the Home Run Derby.

3. What can we expect from Chris Berman tonight?
This, for one:

But the most compelling question, to me, is this: when Mr. Berman pulls out his “that ball was hit all the way to [nearby town],” what will he have to choose from? Of all Major League Baseball locales, Phoenix is among the most isolated. Unlike most other stadiums, the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field is oriented with the batter looking due north. Let’s see what Berman has to work with.

Uh-oh. There’s Lake Pleasant, maybe, but it’s mostly desert apart from that. Zoom out, please.

There it is! I guarantee you that tonight, we will hear, “that one was hit all the way to Flagstaff!” And good for them, because they haven’t received a trivial shout-out since Calvin’s dad told him the sun crashed there every evening.

Beyond that, though, the pickings are hopelessly slim. I fear that Berman will use, “that one was hit all the way to Vegas,” or “to the Bellagio,” or something, even though a ball hit to Las Vegas would be a foul ball. When the strongest and boldest of men grow desperate, the results are not happy ones.