The Statcast Era’s Home Run Derby
In the past few weeks, guests on the Baseball Tonight Podcast with Buster Olney have gone through the exercise of creating their all-time home run derby list. Obvious finalists such as Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Mark McGwire have filled the theoretical brackets. As another season’s All-Star break is upon us, we’ll be graced with a few hours of this year’s big boppers attempting to hit baseballs as far as humanly possible. Though it may be a new format, the goal is the same; hit home runs!
While each season’s competitive field is built on several factors including health, feel of swing, single-season success, and peer pressure, what if it were solely based on metrics? Rather than produce a list of historical legends, let’s use Statcast metrics to build a competitive field using a handful of advanced measurements within the Statcast era (2015-current). Do you have any guesses about who might qualify?
First, I lowered the plate appearance threshold to 500 to open the field, creating a list of players with at least 500 PAs between 2015 and the current date. I created a custom leaderboard that included that PA qualifier and the following arbitrarily selected statistics within the same period:
Average Exit Velocity, Max Exit Velocity, Average Launch Angle, Barrel%, HardHit%, HR/FB, and FB%
From there, I created percentile rankings for each player within each stat listed above and subset the data to players who ranked higher than the 75th percentile in each. That may seem strict as it excludes hitters like Aaron Judge, a Home Run Derby winner, but it’s a way to create a specific, niche-type group. This produced a list of 17 hitters who required an additional layer of selection criteria. I chose to average each player’s percentile rank. Here is the full list with the top 8 contestants being selected:
| Name | EV | maxEV | LA | Barrel% | HardHit% | HR/FB | FB% | AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joey Gallo | 98.2% | 95.8% | 99.9% | 99.9% | 97.7% | 99.2% | 99.7% | 98.6% |
| Mike Trout | 94.0% | 96.9% | 95.0% | 98.8% | 92.8% | 97.9% | 92.7% | 95.5% |
| Patrick Wisdom | 93.1% | 81.4% | 99.4% | 98.7% | 97.3% | 97.1% | 99.6% | 95.2% |
| Matt Olson | 98.6% | 98.7% | 88.2% | 95.3% | 98.7% | 95.3% | 89.1% | 94.8% |
| Kyle Schwarber | 97.8% | 96.0% | 82.2% | 98.3% | 97.8% | 98.6% | 89.9% | 94.4% |
| Miguel Sanó | 99.4% | 94.6% | 81.9% | 99.2% | 99.4% | 99.0% | 84.5% | 94.0% |
| Chris Carter | 93.7% | 79.5% | 97.9% | 98.6% | 90.8% | 93.7% | 99.0% | 93.3% |
| Gary Sánchez | 89.0% | 99.6% | 78.5% | 97.7% | 89.1% | 96.3% | 85.3% | 90.8% |
| Bobby Dalbec | 92.4% | 88.7% | 79.9% | 99.1% | 94.4% | 91.9% | 82.2% | 89.8% |
| Pete Alonso | 79.6% | 98.2% | 82.7% | 96.3% | 84.2% | 96.2% | 90.3% | 89.6% |
| Jorge Soler | 93.2% | 96.4% | 77.8% | 93.7% | 90.1% | 88.2% | 78.6% | 88.3% |
| Brandon Lowe | 83.1% | 79.2% | 88.1% | 94.6% | 86.5% | 92.1% | 87.2% | 87.3% |
| Lucas Duda | 89.1% | 85.0% | 96.8% | 85.3% | 79.2% | 77.6% | 97.7% | 87.2% |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 94.9% | 86.9% | 77.6% | 82.8% | 92.1% | 86.9% | 85.1% | 86.6% |
| Justin Upton | 80.8% | 92.6% | 78.2% | 90.0% | 82.2% | 88.5% | 86.2% | 85.5% |
| Edwin Encarnación | 77.9% | 75.4% | 92.4% | 86.2% | 76.9% | 93.6% | 91.7% | 84.9% |
| Christian Walker | 75.9% | 80.4% | 79.0% | 87.3% | 88.7% | 76.4% | 84.0% | 81.7% |
Contestant #1 – Joey Gallo
A participant in 2021’s home run derby in Colorado, Gallo lost to Trevor Story in the first round after hitting 18 to Story’s 20. Gallo’s career began in 2015 when Statcast began spitting out statistics like launch angle and barrel rate that made Gallo a cult classic type of player. His swing is built to launch and in 2017 Gallo hit 41 home runs and followed it up with 40 home runs in 2018. Here’s a look at Gallo’s monster loft swing from his prime 2017 season:
Pitching coach beware, Gallo will need the pitch in so he can pull it down the line and out of the park. His career Pull% is around 50% compared to an MLB average of around 40%. In addition, Gallo’s career has been hampered by low contact rates, yet with a swing like his, it’s all about when he actually does make contact. For his career, Gallo has made contact only 72% of the time when the ball is in the zone (MLB average ~ 86%):
Contestant #2 – Mike Trout
We all want to see it! Mike Trout has never participated in a home run derby and though what we all really want is a healthy Mike Trout in the World Series, we also want to see how Trout would fare in a derby. You may look at the above table of possible contestants and see that Gallo ranks higher in nearly every statistic. But we all know that Trout is an overall hitter. We don’t need to do this, it’s honestly unfair to Joey Gallo, but let’s look at career comparisons for these two contestants:
| Name | G | PA | HR | R | RBI | SB | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Trout | 1518 | 6647 | 378 | 1123 | 954 | 212 | 14.7% | 22.3% | 0.299 | 0.410 | 0.581 | 85.7 |
| Joey Gallo | 909 | 3308 | 203 | 456 | 437 | 31 | 14.7% | 38.1% | 0.195 | 0.321 | 0.459 | 13.2 |
To Gallo’s credit, his BB% matches Trout’s. But, the difference in all other statistics showcases just how different these two players are. While Gallo is built to put the ball up in the air, Trout is built for the Hall of Fame.
Contestant #3 – Patrick Wisdom
Wisdom’s qualification is somewhat surprising, yet take one look at his swing and you may just be wishing for this to actually happen:
Wisdom had three 20+ home run seasons in a row in his 2021-2023 campaigns. Like Gallo, Wisdom’s swing is built for bombs sent over the wall, but that hurts his contact rates and batting average. He’s hit below .232 in his last four seasons. Irrelevant! This isn’t about hitting a bloop single to the left, it’s about sending a baseball to the moon!
Contestant #4 – Matt Olson
Matt Olson’s two weakest percentile rankings are found in his ability to get the ball in the air (FB%), directly related to his average launch angle (LA). Even still, he appears on this list because his swing is all about power. Those lower rankings actually make for a better all-around hitter and his career year came last season (2023) when he slashed .283/.389/.604 and hit 54 home runs. Olson lost in the first round of 2021 to Trey Mancini just missing a home run down the right-field line that could have tied the round. He deserves another shot:
Contestant #5 – Kyle Schwarber
The 2018 HR Derby finals in which Schwarber faced off with home team participant Bryce Harper must go down as one of the greatest finals in derby history. He clubbed 55 home runs in the whole contest, more than anyone else, yet he lost in the final round to Harper, who turned on nitro-mega mode and hammered a 434-foot dinger in the bonus round to secure the win. What about 2022’s derby? Did he take a little off, or did Albert Pujols‘ old-man strength kick in during his farewell tour? We’ll never know. But, a two-time participant Schwarber is. His best two rankings are in his HR/FB and Barrel% making him an efficient fly ball hitter. In each season starting in 2019 and ending in 2023 (excluding 2020), Schwarber has hit at least 30 home runs. Even more (again excluding 2020), he’s hit at least 25 home runs in each season starting back in 2017.
Contestant #6 – Miguel Sanó
The percentile category winner, Miguel Sanó, has the highest rank among this group in both EV and HardHit%, but joining the list of ranks in the 99th percentile are HR/FB and Barrel%. He was a derby contestant back in 2017 when he beat Gary Sánchez (Contestant #8) in Miami:
Yes, there was that time Sanó made a ball disappear from Fenway Park. Sure, Sanó hit one of the longest home runs in the Statcast era, a projected 496 feet. But, Sanó struggles to launch the ball in the right zone with regularity. Although, you really can’t complain about a percentile rank in the 80’s, can you? Sanó hits the ball and it looks relatively effortless considering how far the ball goes.
Contestant #7 – Chris Carter
Only three out of his eight major league seasons were within the Statcast era, but Chris Carter could have benefited from someone pointing out that his xSLG was measured significantly over his actual slugging percentage in each of the three seasons he played with Statcast measurements. He hit the ball hard 45% of the time when the league was averaging around 29%-30%. In an excellent article for CBS Sports, R.J. Anderson detailed Carter’s post-MLB career in Mexico and pointed out that Carter was one of the founders of the three-true outcomes hitting philosophy.
Utilizing the barrel of the bat and getting the ball up in the air was Carter’s specialty and he would have been a joy to watch in a home run derby on the big stage.
Contestant #8 – Gary Sánchez
You do remember when Sánchez hit a ball 493 feet in Comerica, right?:
Sánchez wins in the maxEV department amongst this list of sluggers, in part, because he hit a ball 121 MPH back in 2018. The year prior, 2017, Sánchez defeated Giancarlo Stanton and lost to (Contestant #6) Miguel Sanó. Yet, it was Aaron Judge who won the derby that year, besting his Yankee teammate with a show that will also go down in derby history. While Sánchez’s power speaks for itself, he’s always had issues getting the ball in the air with consistency. His flyball rate and launch angle have always been just a little low for all that power. Take a look at the comparison in radial charts, which show results based on a player’s launch angle, between Sánchez and Gallo:
Don’t quibble with me about, “How is Aaron Judge not on this list?!” or “What about Giancarlo Stanton?!” I didn’t pick these contestants, the percentiles did. But, whoever comes out victorious in the real, 2024 version of this season’s Home Run Derby, may just find themselves on this career list in the future. Enjoy one of baseball’s most fun nights and cross your fingers Gallo returns for a VIP swing.
“Don’t quibble with me about, ‘How is Aaron Judge not on this list?!’ or ‘What about Giancarlo Stanton?!’”
So the two hitters who should sit atop of any list of best Homerun Derby contestants are not included but don’t bring that up! “It’s not my fault, they didn’t meet the parameters!”
Of course, you picked the parameters but you don’t want to be taken to task for choosing obviously deficient categories. What a sad joke of an article.
The problem with the “statcast thinks Joey Gallo is a better home run hitter than Aaron Judge” argument is that it unfairly makes a mockery of statcast.
In a more general sense, having Joey Gallo at the top of ANY list other than one for Three True Outcomes is a red flag telling you that you goofed something up.