Apr 09, 2007 12:46 AM<\/p>\n
David Wright\u2019s power numbers were down the second half of last season and he\u2019s off to a little bit of a rough start this year. However, one thing I\u2019m tired of hearing about is the Home Run Derby and how it messed up his swing. This is not an exclusive argument to Wright and has been applied to many players. Obviously the biggest detractor from the argument is to look at how the Derby champion, Ryan Howard, did afterwards. His swing certainly didn\u2019t look messed up.<\/p>\n
I find it really hard to believe that a professional hitter, which is what all of the participants of the Derby are, can be messed up by a couple of hours of extracurricular fun. Why do those 50 or so swings have a bigger effect then the dozens more a player does between the derby and his next regular season game. At the very least he\u2019s got the All-Star Game and any warm-up associated with that, plus batting practice of the next game after the break. Besides the hours of batting practice Wright and other such players had for the last 80 games or so, there is also a hitting coach and 24 other players (Okay, more like 12 other hitters) on the team that can help out if his swing looks a little off.<\/p>\n
So does the Home Run Derby actually affect a player\u2019s power numbers for the second half of the season or is it just another stat anomaly that people read too much into? My bet\u2019s on the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apr 09, 2007 12:46 AM David Wright\u2019s power numbers were down the second half of last season and he\u2019s off to a little bit of a rough start this year. However, one thing I\u2019m tired of hearing about is the Home Run Derby and how it messed up his swing. This is not an exclusive … <\/p>\n