You Shouldn’t Worry About Kyle Schwarber Competing in the HR Derby

Yesterday it was announced Kyle Schwarber will compete in the HR Derby. And while having a Phillies player in the Derby will undoubtedly be a good thing for the team's image, it was met with potentially valid concerns. There is a running theory that participating in the HR Derby hurts a player's swing. But is that true? Is the curse a real thing, or is it fiction? I, having no life and too much time on my hands, spent way too much time seeing how players have fared after competing in the All-Star Game. Here are the stats before, and after the All-Star break, from the last 4 years of HR Derby Participants.

The first number in each box is what they did before the derby. The second is what they did after competing.

That is a lot of data to sort through. Homerun totals are not the fairest stat to go by, because the player may have played fewer games in the 2nd half. I think the best stat to go by is slugging percentage. It is a good measure of power production and accounts for the disparity of games played in each half of the season.

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So how much did participating in the derby impact each player's slugging percentage? 19 of the 40 players saw their slugging percentage drop. That may not seem so bad when you realize that it means 21 players saw their slugging percentage go up or stay the same. But when you account for how much those players slugging percentages dropped, it looks worse. 16 players saw their SLG% drop by more than .05. 7 saw their slugging percentage drop by .100. Compared to only 9 who saw it go up by .050.  And when you take the 40 players as a total, they averaged a Slugging % of .542 before the Derby, and .518 after it.

That may seem like a major difference. But to put it into context Albert Pujols's career SLG % is .542. and Jason Giambi's is .516. Giambi is a good player, and Pujols is an All-Time great. That .024 difference is bigger than it looks.

But we can't ignore that there is a non-zero amount of players who saw their production increase after the derby. Some even saw it go up by a large amount. So first let's specifically look at what Kyle Schwarber did the last time he competed. In 2018 he finished second in the derby behind Bryce Harper. Before the break, his slash line was .249/.375/.498/.873. After, it fell to .221/.323/.417/.740. So not great. Kyle Schwarber has even spoken to feeling fatigued after the derby.

So should we be concerned about how the derby will impact him? Well, there was one more thing I looked into, that is specific to Schwarber. I went and looked at the last 5 guys who participated in the Derby multiple times, to see how it affected them.

What we can take from this, is players seem to learn from their first time competing. Whether it is that they conserve their energy better, or learn to not overswing. I don't really know. But the data doesn't lie. Apart from Giancarlo Stanton in his 2nd appearance, all of these guys saw wild improvements after participating in subsequent HR Derbies. And Stanton saw a huge improvement the third time he participated, so even he doesn't disprove the theory that players fare better after competing in the derby multiple times.

These 6 players had an average slugging percentage of .573 before their first time and followed that up with an average slugging percentage of .476. A drop of .097. For reference .573 is Joe DiMaggio's career slugging percentage. And .476 is Matt Stairs' career slugging percentage. But those slugging percentages improve to .510 before the break. and .580 after it in each of their other derbies. So it goes from a drop of .097 to a gain of .070.

So should we be concerned about Schwarber? Maybe a little. But the numbers are on his side. Players who compete a 2nd time don't regress nearly as bad as first-timers. In fact, many get better. Schwarber is aware of what the derby did to him the last time. He knows that he overtaxed himself, and his production suffered. I have a hard time imagining he would make that mistake a 2nd time. It will be something to keep an eye on. But if you are holding your breath out of concern that this will tank the back half of the season for him, you can relax a bit. The numbers say he should be fine. So enjoy Schwarber being in the Derby. If he puts up a performance like last time, it should be fun to watch.