someone might die that night!

I remember seeing a study around this time last year, but I can’t find it.

2008
Justin Morneau
OPS dropped 70 points, slugging dropped 31 points, HR/PA dropped from 29 to 33
Josh Hamilton
OPS dropped 45 points Slugging dropped 54 points, HR/PA dropped from 20 to 25

2007
Vlad Guerrero
OPS dropped 27 points, slugging went up a point and HR/PA went up 26 to 22
Alex Rios
OPS dropped 39 points, slugging dropped 49 points, and HR/PA dropped 22 to 46
Fielder
OPS went up 38 points, slugging went down 6 points and HR/PA dropped from 13 to 14.5

2006
Ryan Howard
OPS went up 336 points, slugging went up 170 points and HR/PA went up from 12.5 to 11.7
(Ryan got a lot more walks in the second half (77 to 31), otherwise only had 15 more total bases compared to first half with the same number of PAs)
David Wright
OPS dropped 120 points, slugging dropped 106 points, and HR/PA dropped from 19 to 46

2005
Bobby Abreu
OPS dropped 168 points, slugging dropped 115 points and HR/PA dropped from 22 to 53
Pudge Rodriguez
OPS dropped 64 points, slugging dropped 29 points and HR/PA went up 51 to 27
(The HR/PA is deceiving… pudge only hit 14 HR all year. This was the year that the all star game went international with players in the HR Derby representing their countries)
Carlos Lee
OPS dropped 107 points, slugging dropped 91 points and HR/PA dropped from 15 to 28

2004
Miguel Tejada
OPS went up 66 points, slugging went up 60 points and HR/PA went up 23 to 17
Lance Berkman
OPS went up 16 points, slugging went up 19 points and HR/PA went up (slightly) 22.8 to 23

And because Albert Pujos is a stud and the best player in baseball I will add his appearances

2003
OPS dropped 37 points, slugging dropped 56 points and HR/PA dropped from 14.7 to 15.2
2007
OPS went up 154 points, slugging went up 115 points and HR/PA went up from 23 to 19

Miguel Tejada in 2004, Albert Pujos in 2007 and Ryan Howard in 2006 (his MVP year) had significantly better second halves after their participation in the Derby.

Fielder in 2007 and Berkman in 2004 improved slightly.

9 of the 14 participants listed here had noticeably worse second halves.

What this doesn’t tell us – a lot

I have no idea what the league average drop is from the first half to the second half (sorry couldn’t find league wide splits in ESPiN, Baseball reference or Yahoo). Without knowing if these performance drops are ‘normal’ when compared to the league you can’t draw any real conclusions. But I didn’t want to do any real work this morning so I thought that I would do this.

I still would rather not have Prince in the Derby. I can’t say with proof that it will hurt his swing or second half performance. What I can say for certainty is that it won’t help his swing and he is the one Brewer who hasn’t had a day off and a day of rest would be nice.