How to Fix the MLB Home Run Derby

Published Jul 16, 2024, 10:06 PM

Jomboy has an idea that should get more stars into the Home Run Derby and is deep-diving on some statistical outliers from the first half as well as some All-Star Game fun facts!

Jimmy's 3 Things is best viewed on YouTube! You can watch today's episode here: https://youtu.be/zdNp-rzKyys

0:00 Intro
0:27 Fixing the Home Run Derby
13:00 Statistical outliers
23:23 All-Star Game Fun Facts

#dpshow

Hello, and welcome to Jimmy's Three Things. Today we will be talking about the Home Run Derby. I've created a new system. It's awesome maybe. And then there's another thing called Scatterplot Outliers, and then there's a third thing called All Star Game Fun Facts. Jimmy's Three Things is a production of Dan Patrick Productions, John Boy Media, and Workhouse Media. But the Cowboy had on and take it off and we're off the first thing. Okay, Home Run Derby. We were there. The ending was cool. The rest of it wasn't that great. I've heard that people that watched it on the broadcast also said it was rather lackluster. The in stadium experience was pretty dull for a long time, and there's a couple factors that I don't know if these are the factors. But this is my third Derby I've been to, and the previous format with no ball limit was amazing for the in stadium experience, but I understand the broadcast was really hard because you couldn't track the balls. They couldn't they couldn't track two home runs at the same time, and two balls would be the in the air at once. So for the broadcast, it was tough. That's where they wanted to slow it down for the d stadium experience. When we were in Denver, and then when we were in LA it was unbelievable. It was genuinely I felt like how some grown adults feel at WWE or how little kids feel at Disney World those two years, because it was just like, oh oh oh, that one. That one. Only having one lefty kept an entire half of the stadium dormant and quiet. So again that's for the in stadium experience. I think you need a bigger balance. I don't know if anyone cares about that. On TV, and certain stadiums with their money prize involved, you're not going to be able to do that as well, because if it's a you know, Fenway, you're gonna want to have a ariety pop them over the monster, so you can't really do that. So those are some of the things. And then the star power. I don't think we had any balls hit over four hundred and seventy five feet. You need guys hit in moonshots. You need guys guffawd. You know, I remember all the reactions to Judge hitting them in twenty seventeen or Alonzo in twenty eighteen or Show Hey, Show on the third deck. Another situation is I think that ballpark just kind of shrinks homers because in right field there's no second deck. It's way too high when you have because that first row of seats in right field is like fifty seats deep. When you have those facades like the Yankee Stadium second deck or Philly or Astros, you know that ball lands in that second or third deck before it starts to come down. When they start to come down, your imagination of how far it would have gone gets ruined. So I figured out a system. I thought about how they do hard knocks. How they do hard knocks, there's like criteria for who gets chosen, and this is baked into a contract with the league and the teams that they all sign. And no appearance in the past ten seasons of hard knocks, So if you haven't been on it in the last ten years, you're eligible to be chosen. You a coach can't be in their first year. So if you have a first year coach not eligible to be chosen for hard knocks and no playoff appearance in the previous two seasons. So two stinkers in a row. You can't say no. If you have those, you can say no, which does wheedle it down a little bit. So my suggestion, which is never gonna happen because the negotiations would be awful. But in the next CBA, this is what I think would help the event get star power there. If i'm MLB and MLB's Players Association, here's my criteria that I wrote down. I actually didn't write down anywhere, so I'll just say it. Okay, you take if you finished in the top ten for home runs the year before you're eligible, will be chosen. If you are in the top ten in Major League Baseball for home runs the current year in the first half, you're eligibly chosen. I think that's gonna be weed you down to about fifteen guys. Then you have the caveats. If you've done it in the last two years, three years, whatever that would be, you can say nope, not I I already did it two years ago. I already did it last year. I don't want to do it this year. Maybe, like if you had an il stint in the month of May, June or July, you don't have to do it. Maybe if your wife's sick. You don't have to do it. That's where I tried to ask Trevor Pluff and other people, like, what are more caveats for people to say no? Because I want the players to agree to it. And then if you do get chosen, you should get a bonus or you should get a donation to your charity. So okay, So that's the one thing. The other thing that needs to happen in general for the Derby, I think, and if you were to do this, it has to be less rounds and less swings. These guys, that's the most swings they've done in a two to three hour period ever. And their bodies. It's a little risky for the obliques, for the shoulders. Judge got hurt in twenty seventeen. So you got to strength the field to six guys top three advance those three go win or wins two rounds. May it a two hour two and a half hour event. It's too long. It like really doles and loses its luster. So I put this into practice. I went and I got last year's top ten homer run winners Matt old Or top ten in homers, Matt Olsen, Kyle Schwarber, pet Alonzo Shoheo Tani, Ronald Leccuno, Junior Marcel Ozuna, Mookie Betts, Adolice Garcia, Luis Robert, Aaron Judge, Austin Riley, A lot of those names we've seen do the derby, which is cool. Did Louis Robert do it? He did, right, so I can change his name to red all right. So then this year, first half of the season, Aaron, Judge, Shoeo, Tani, Marcelo, Zuna, repeat names, Gunner Henderson, Athal Ralphaeld Devers, Josh Naylor, Christian Walker. So I went and I found out which guys have done it in the last two years. They did it last year. So last year, A Dooli's Garcia, he's out unless you make a clause that hometown kid needs to be in it. If you're if you're hosting and you're leading your team at Homers, you're in the fucking derby. We need you grow the game be exciting. Because when a Doolie's Garcia got announced and the stadium went crazy all of a sudden, it was like, oh shit, I want to root for him because that's a much better atmosphere. So you do need a hometown kid. But he did it last year, so we could say no. Mookie Betts did it last year, so he can say no. Pete Alonso did it last year, so he could say no. He's not gonna say no. Jay Ram did it in two thousand and twenty twenty two, so he could say no. Juan Soto did it in twenty twenty two, so he could say no. Luis Robert did it in twenty twenty two, so he can say no. Ronald Acunyo Junior, Kyle Schwarber could say no. And if you want to watch on YouTube, I have these names on screen which would be easier to keep track of, So I chose six guys. Guess what show? Hey, you're in the Derby. Congrats, we got some money for your charity. Eat bacon, watch it and have fun. You can bet on it if he wants prison Bets, salt, Becketts and stuff. Aaron judged you're in the Derby. Wow, we just three x the viewership. All of Japan is now watching. We're growing the game, so they're in it. They can't say no. This is agreed upon. CBA. Did it complain to them fake an injury? Do what you gotta do, You're in it. I chose Pete Alonzo because he's not gonna say no. Come on, it's Pete. So you got those three guys. And then I also chose Gunner Henderson Young fun promote the game You're in it. I chose just Naylor because I think he hits long, high homers and he's like a spitfire of a human, like that'd be really fun to watch. That's five. If you want the hometown kid, Adolie Garcia say if it wasn't in Texas, you know the other options here that can't say no. Raphael Devers can't say no. Santander can't say no. Bryce Arberg, sorry shoe if he said Bryce Arbrough screen, he didn't lead. He's not in the top ten, so like obviously he's a big star, so there could be caveats, but this would guarantee you studs that are performing well and some stars because the top home runs a row stars here. So Matt Olsen can't say no, show, he can't say no, Judge can't say no. You've already got a better field than this year. You've already got more pop, more star power, longer home runs. Alonso can say no, he's not going to. Marcelo Zuna can't say no, but everyone else can. Austin Riley can't say no, Gunnar Henderson can't say no, Sotandar Devers, Nailor Walker. That's what I'd propose. It doesn't need to be that. You know, we can change the criteria. You know this year's top fifteen. If you think you need more options, you know, you can allow guys to submit themselves, and then the league thinks, yeah, he's a star, he's better, let's get him. Bryce Arper wants to do it. They're not gonna say no to him. But this kind of guarantees it. And it all starts with like they agree to this at the CBA and the players who are having great seasons, no, this is on the table and they can't say no. And you're just guaranteed to get guys who will hit long balls and star power in there and then their shorter rounds because that's better for like consumption energy of the stadium, which then builds the whole atmosphere. Shout out to Greg Gamsinger. He was going crazy the whole night. Someone pointed it out to me. He was like, man, he's still got a li energy. I was like, he's been doing this whole night. That's nuts because how many times you say, come on, guys, let's hear it. Because the stadium was just falling asleep. Man, come on, guys, let's here pick them up. We need you to pick them up Texas. That was maybe every ten minutes on the in house PA. So that's my system. Let me know what you think, and let me know, like what other caveats should be there. If your team's in first place, they get to say no. That kind of stinks because you know you want that. The other thing would be some stadiums. It's really not fair, especially take away the cash prize. You know, you pay a million dollars to the winner right now, just divide that between the six of them or whatever, like, you know, two hundred and fifty grand. That's not a lot to them. Maybe it goes to their charity and then they get the paid off and enjoy, you know, doing good deeds. Two hundred and fifty thousand times six or one point five, all right, so it's one million to the winner right now. Instead it's one point five divided amongst the six contestants to their charities or to them whatever they want, so it's not for nothing. And when you take out the cash prize, now you can tight loosen some of the rules and standards and say, we want three lefties, we want three righties, we want the whole stadium buzzing, and we're gonna rotate them. So the whole right field section isn't just asleep because we were sleepy out there. It wasn't for Grey. Come on, not get up, come on, let we need your help. We need your help. We need help. Shit's boring. So that's how I fix it. That's my suggestion to fix the Derby is make a system like the hard Knock system. Put it in the CBA. The players agree to it, they're gonna ask for some more carve outs. They're gonna say, if you've ever done it before, you don't have to do it again. And maybe we're fine with that, but maybe you want show Hey and Aaron Judge in it, okay, because I think the million dollar prize, I don't know if they wanted to they wanted to incentivize the big stars because now it's money. But I actually think what they did was anyone that's got a three hundred million dollars contract two hundred million. Our contract isn't gonna go enter these sweepstakes to steal money from the dude making five hundred grand. I think the big dudes are actually like nah man like, I don't want to take that away from Gunner Henderson, who can double his salary in one night. Let's let them and I want to let them shine. I want to let them grow, which is great. You need to grow. You need to grow new personalities and new players like Gunner Henderson. But imagine if show Hey was up right after it, right before Gunner Henderson. Now who's got two million new Japanese followers? Gunner Henderson. That's how you grow the game. And you put Judge up, and then following him is whoever else did it? Yes night, Bobby Witt Right, So there you go. That's the first thing we've discussed it. It's over with. We're gonna move on to the next thing, which is Scott scatterplot Outliers, which I deleted, deleted all my leaderboards here, and I was I was hoping I was gonna run into more fun shit. So what I did was uh And if you're on YouTube, you can see a custom leaderboard stat cast. I was interested in some some some stuff, and I'll show you real quick. So I was just making a bunch of scatterplots, plots, most of them off bat speed or age. I'll show you, like, Okay, we're gonna do a scatter plot. And on the X access, Uh, we're gonna do age, all right. And then on the Y access and I don't know if I'm using Y and X correctly here, I'm gonna be honest with you. But on the bottom one, the horizontals at why so maybe I had said that right, I don't think so, I don't know. Wait, which one's across for the people listening, X is the well people listening came to see it, so they don't care, all right, ex access is age. And then I went to all the slash lines and just so wanted to see, like, is there any any through line here? And guess what with age comes the worst batting average over time slightly It's like two point fifty at twenty years old, and uh, then it goes down to like two thirty for the first half of the season. And I was like, all right, so your average declines as you get older. We all know that. How about slugging that declines as well as you get older. So far in the first half of the year, so ops, that declines. But check this out on base percentage stays pretty fucking neutral the whole entire way. Old guys can see well. So that's just an example. And then I was finding outliers. So I liked doing bat speed because that's the new stat that we're tracking that people don't know about. So I wanted to do bat speed versus K percentage, which is the the sharpest. I wanted to just find one that was like the sharpest trend. And I think everyone this makes sense. The faster you swing the bat, the more likely you are to k because you're in less control, right, So some outliers here, this bubble is an outlier. Kevin Bigio, he swings the bat pretty slowly, sixty six mile power and average, and he kays a lot. And then this one's probably the best seventy six mile per hour bat speed, but only k's out of sixteen percent clip you're on Alvarez, So those are kind of the outliers of this in a way. And then walk percentage for bat speed. Also, the faster you swing the better you are at taking a base. I thought that was somewhat interesting, and then I kind of thought about it more. I was like, well, I thought, if you were swinging wild, real fast all the time, you're probably walking less because you sound out of control to me, you know, But I think they have that yes, yes, yes, swing and they know no, not it a lot and don't swing. So actually the chart trends up you swing faster, you're gonna walk more unless you are Luisa Rais. And that's when I was like, oh, yeah, contact hitters swing slow, and they know they can get bat to ball, so they put the ball in play more so they don't get so they swing more. They're not waiting for the perfect pitch like guys who are looking to slug and pop. So that made a little more sense when I put it into personspective. But then you got Giencarlo Stanton, who doesn't walk a lot and as the most bat speed he's a big outlier in that one. Sprint speed was the same realization for me right here. Okay, so now I'm going to change the X access to sprint speed, all right, And if you're fast, get on base so you can get on get over right, that's what you would think. You would think that the speedy guys walk more buckers what they walk.

Less, because if you aren't, if you've got speed, like Ellie daily Cruz, just put that baby in play, put the pressure on them.

So I was wrong on my general assumption. There some outliers would be Cosmani Grendl and Martine Maldonado. They are very very slow and they don't walk it all bad combo, bad combo. The best at this Elie de la Cruz, he walks a good amount and he's very fast. Bobby Witt Junior, he walks less than average, but he's uh, he's very fast. Who's this up here? Wan Soto obviously hest walk percentage in the league medium speed, all right, so sprint speed and K percentage reverse, which is obvious. So the faster you are, the more you're gonna k, which I that kind of grew, kind of grinds my gears. What nature of the beast? I guess. There's a couple of scatterplots I noted when I was doing when I was prepping for this, and then I forget about him. I screen shatted some Let's see what this one is this is bad speed and whiffs? Oh yeah, this was an egregious one. So the faster you swing, the more you whiff, makes sense less control. And this was swing length and fast swing all right, So let me find that because there was a big outlier there swing length, got a long swing? And would I say swing length and fast fast swing percentage? Now I gotta figure out what that is first before I keep going swing length and fast swing percentage? So how many times do you let it rip? Basically? Is that what fast swing percentage would be? Like? How many times are you getting after it giving it your a swing? So there was a big outline. Who is it? Gian Carlo stan is really funny because he's got a long swing eight point four units of measurement that they use. I don't know what it is. Seconds, seconds, I don't know. And he does his fast swing ninety eight percent of the time. One swing king should be his nickname now. JD. Martinez has a really long swing. That's why he's breaking catcher's wrists. Remember that that's crazy. Uh, But he doesn't use a fast swing a lot all that's odd because he's like a power homer guy. I thought he was different let me see if there's any others I think are cool, because I really wanted to look at zone swing an out of zone swing. Because I'm gonna guess if you I'm gonna just guess this based on everything I learned from previous things. If you if your bat speed is slow, that means you have more control. Luisa Raise uh wit merrorfield is slow, and there's another one, Kwan, then I would think that you swing out of the zone more because you feel like you can get to it. But no, very slightly so slower bat speed. Guys like a Rise who's got a sixty three mile prior swing on average, which is the slowest in the league. He swings out of the zone thirty five percent of times, so that is kind of higher. He's an outlier. Ernie Clement who says Stan obviously he swings O'Neil Cruz, Javey Baiaz. That adds up. He's got a fast swing and he's always swinging out of the zone. Who are these guys that never swing out of the zone, Kwan? That's funny, Luisa, Riis and Kwan are different, but they both don't They both have slow swings. Arise expands the zone way more. Kwan does not expand the zone at all. Actually, what was interesting was Stephen kwan bat speed is slow. But when I did bat speed compared to slugging, Kwan was a pretty big outlier on this graph. So Kwan swings the bat at sixty five miles per hour, it's like fourth slowest in the league. His other batters that swing the bat that's slow. You have Luis Giorme who has a slugging percentage of like three ten. You have Nicky Lopez who has a slugging percentage that starts with a two, and you have wit Merrifield who had a slugging percentage that started with a two. Those three all had a the bat speed of sixty four to sixty five miles per hour. Stephen Kwan is the fourth member of that bat speed and his slugging is like five twenty. So that's a huge outlier that he's swinging that slow, but he's able to generate slug and some of those guys are fast too. Where they were Nicky Lopez is fast, right, big outlier. This guy Hovey Bayez again pops up. He's always an outlier. He swings relatively fast, no slugging at all. A lot of these charts were like, hey, Hovey, maybe change up your entire game. Go slower. This was tough. Jose McFly was looking at this with me and he was like, who's that guy And he pointed at the dot. That's pretty slow swing speed and really bad slugging. And I said, yeah, let's see who that is. And then it was DJ le Mayhew and we were like, oh, matches the eye test though, So that's stunk. All right. I got three minutes left for my third thing, which are all Star game fun facts one, two, three, Wow, Shelfy, you is right next to me. Phillies fan Cherry Pinstripes go listen. The Phillies have the most All Stars with seven, the most in their franchise history. Eight Now who got added? Oh, Christopher Sanchez got added to make it eight. Luis Ariiz and Juan Soda are All Stars for the third straight season with a third different team. That's a fun fact. Arise goes Minnesota, Miami, San Diego, Sodo goes Washington, San Diego, New York. Wow, is there a guy that's done four for four? Stat Department? I don't know how to search that Paul Skeens is the first player to be an All Star the year after being drafted in the June Amateur draft. Really, I would have thought Strasburg did that, right, he was quick. Strasburgers drafted first of the two thousand and nine MLB June Amateur Draft. He made his debut in twenty ten. Punk you'll never be You'll never be Skien Strass blew it. Uh? What about Nolan Shanuel if he made the Aslar team, he could have done that. No, it was last year. Holy shit, that's cool. I can't think of anyone. What about that kid who pitched when he was eighteen for in Indiana Feller? No, it's another guy. Twenty four is the second straight season with at least four rookie All Stars. Oh, that's cool. The only other time it's happened in consecutive season MB history was twenty eleven and twenty twelve. That was like the Harper Machado, Will Myers Trout error. Right, who's the other guy? I feel like there was another one in that group that I'm forgetting. Huduckson Profar became just the eighteenth player in the al Slash NL history to play at least eleven seasons before starting their first All Star game. Profar has been around for eleven seasons. Obviously he has because we've been hearing about him for so long. But that's kind of crazy and awesome. Eighteenth player in al slash NL, which is just MLB history to play at least eleven seasons before starting their first All Star game? Who was the most recent? If I google that sentence, because I'm sure like Dalt gets these from an article somewhere. It's an article by Brian Murphy at spokes Underscore. Murphy thanks briy. Nine players whose first All Star Game start was worth the lengthy weight. We're gonna rip through this and then we're out of here. Nineteen thirty three, Babe Ruth, twenty seasons. I think they didn't have All Star games. Just think they didn't have them. Nineteen thirty three, Jimmy Dikes. Again, I think if I google first All Star game, they're gonna come up with nineteen thirty three, which makes that list starting first MLB All Star game? If this says nineteen thirty three, Brian, I don't like that you included them in the article. It was impossible for them to be All Stars, it didn't exist, So Frankie Frish also don't care about you, Travis Jackson. Okay, maybe I should read the article. I think in the paragraph above he's going to disclose this, and I skipped it. Eight of the previous sixteen players were headliners of the nineteen twenties who obviously didn't have an early opportunity to play in the AL Slash and All Star Game. Why aren't we calling it the Major League Baseball Star Game? Why do why do we have to say the AL Slash NL All Star Game? That makes no sense to me? Which was established in nineteen thirty three. Okay, so I'm sorry, Brian, I that's my fault. See user error. I didn't read the paragraph that leaves nine others who did be debut after nineteen thirty three and spent at least eleven scene is the major before being honored as an All Star game? Who are they glad? You asked? Let's do it? My dude, Raoul Aban, Yes, I'm we. I mean we met Raoul. He's awesome. He texted me once after a breakdown and said he thought it was really well done, and he was like so nice, and I hope we get to do some stuff together. So congrats to Raoul walt Weiss, one of the better. Dugout go tease, Jerrickson, Profar, Dave Henderson, Frank Coward, Joe Adcock, Eddie Juiced, you say it juiced, Phil Cavaretti, And that's all all right. That was it. Thanks guys, appreciate you subscribe to the channel. Uh Go Yanks, psych go Baseball. It's not hawking Yanks. Wrung outro bye

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