The Home Run Derby pool: The greatest game ever invented and the players Im picking for it this y
The best day of spring for me is when I get the note from my buddy Paul, telling me Home Run Derby signups are open. I feel bad for anyone who doesn’t have a Paul in their lives. And then I get together with my other buddy Sias — usually at a bar, this year will be over a Hangout, maybe even just a flurry of texts — where we put a team together to complement our personal entries. I also feel bad for anyone who doesn’t have a Sias.
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Home Run Derby is awesome. And simple. You pick a team of seven hitters, and the team with the most home runs at the end of the season wins. Limiting your selections are (usually) two rules:
For 2021, the organizers of our Home Run Derby pool are reverting to 2019 stats, instead of pro-rating the 2020 60-season stats. I’m totally fine with that, although I would’ve liked to have added Jorge Soler as an 8-HR discount as opposed to a 48-HR tough decision. Such is life.
In years past, I’ve blocked off a few hours on my calendar to go over just home runs. On top of the revelry with Sias, which usually devolves into a drunken mess and has very little strategy talk, upon reflection. This year, since I’ve been editing so many sets of projections, I decided to get all number-y and see what might turn up. And then, because I’m doing the work anyway, I figured I’d just turn it into a column. Maybe it’ll introduce Home Run Derby to some new players (it is so very easy to organize: just grab a bunch of friends, ask them for $20 each, and create a shared doc to track leaders every week) or maybe it’ll give fellow HR Derby enthusiasts a couple more resources to check before handing in their picks.
Let’s start with the cheat sheet.
1. The cheat sheet and THE JAKE
This year, we put out a customizable cheat sheet for fantasy players to input settings and create a list of rankings for their league. I figured if I just set the point scoring for home runs, we’d have a start. And then I realized I could just sort by projected HRs. You hear a lot of people citing Steamer, THE BAT X, ATC and a host of other projections. This cheat sheet features Jake Ciely’s projections, and I’ve already told him he needs a catchy name where he can retrofit an acronym. Like THE JAKE, which can stand for Just Awesome Killer Expectations. Who cares, right? It’s an ALL-CAPS acronym.
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Anyway, THE JAKE has your Top 15 HR leaders looking like this:
THE JAKE projections vs HR Derby cost
From this list, it looks like Joey Gallo (22), Yordan Álvarez (27), Aaron Judge (27) and Fernando Tatís Jr. (22) are decently-priced contenders for our team. In that order, actually.
2. Scouring the cheap guys
If we want to make a play for Pete Alonso, Mike Trout, or any of the top hitters, we’re going to need to balance them out with at least one 13-15 HR addition. That group includes:
Andrew Benintendi (13): Benintendi should get a lot of playing time in Kansas City — 600+ plate appearances — but the park downgrade isn’t good for his case and he’s never hit more than 20 home runs in any professional season. However, that 20-HR season was his rookie year in Boston, when he was 22-years old playing against advanced pros. Could he hit 25 home runs in KC? It’s not out of the realm of possibility, especially if you subscribe to the “doubles turn into homers as players age” philosophy — Benintendi twice hit 40+ doubles in a season. And that home park was the one that allowed our HR Derby patron saint, Jorge Soler, 48 home runs two years ago.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr (15): THE JAKE has Vlad Jr. hitting 27.6 home runs this season. The BAT X is the most bullish with him at 30, but it looks like everything averages out to about 27-ish from the FanGraphs coterie of projections. I can’t see how you pass up on the potential here, especially if you believe (as I do) that these projections may still be a little conservative.
Mitch Haniger (15): The last time we had a full, healthy season from Haniger, he hit 26 home runs. And it looks like he’ll be Seattle’s leadoff hitter this season, so we can knock on wood and project 600 plate appearances. But Haniger hit those 26 home runs in a breakout 27-year-old season. He’s now 30 and will probably have to shake off rust after missing most of 2019 and all of 2020. Although, in 2019, Haniger had 15 home runs over 246 at-bats, which would have put him on pace for 33-ish. So I guess this move (should you choose to make it) is about how quickly you think Haniger can get his timing back.
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David Dahl (15): For his career, Dahl has seen more than 250 at-bats just once in a season. But he’s eclipsed 15 home runs twice, and if you jam his two injury-marred seasons together (2018 and 2019), you get 31 home runs over 177 games. If you consider 15 of those games came when Dahl was playing hurt and being generally ineffective, we can call it something like 29 home runs over 162 games. Or at least I’m comfortable with that. Dahl also played his home games in Colorado, so maybe we discount for that, especially looking at his splits since 2016:
But Dahl will now have a chance to DH, which could keep him healthier. And that could keep him in the lineup and offer him chances to get into a rhythm. Someone as oft-injured as Dahl will start and stop a lot, messing with his timing. Keeping him healthy could help lock him in to hot streaks and maybe — mayyybeeee — we see a flirtation with 30 home runs. I’ll be honest — I like the upside here now far more than I did before I started writing this blurb.
Joey Votto (15): I don’t think 28 home runs are out of the question, I just like the upside of someone like Dahl better. The Reds might be contenders this year and they have a good amount of power bats; I could see Votto dipping back into his walk-happy ways to “help the team more” by getting on base and driven in.
Garrett Cooper (15): I love Garrett Cooper. And I love James Rowson, Miami’s hitting coach who turned the 2019 Twins into homer-happy record-setters. But Cooper is facing an uphill battle for at-bats, with Don Mattingly even admitting that they want to keep him from being worn down and injured.
Tommy La Stella (16): La Stella can hit 25 home runs. He had 16 in 292 at-bats in 2019 before getting hurt. THE JAKE has him hitting 12.6 over 425 at-bats. And that’s actually the high number across the projection systems. But that 2019 power surge could very well be real; La Stella was never given full-time at-bats before in his career… but he never really flexed a lot of power in the minors when he had full seasons of play. Chances are pretty good La Stella hits 13, but he’ll probably get a lot of at-bats in the Giants lineup and his manager and front office are very forward-looking, meaning if La Stella’s surge came from him studying launch angle, Barrel rate, buying a Rapsodo and really digging into the measureables — he’ll end up being super-charged with San Francisco. Admittedly, though, pitting La Stella’s unknown vs. Dahl’s injury history still leaves me leaning Dahl.
3. The next Jorge Soler
Jorge Soler hit 48 home runs in 2019 (we’ve mentioned this). His highest total before that was 12. How could we have seen this coming? There were a couple tells. In 2014, Soler hit 15 home runs over 200 at-bats as a 22-year-old. Then in 2017, Soler hit 24 over 273 at-bats as a 25-year-old. The problem in the majors was similar to La Stella’s: he never got the chance at full-time at-bats, until, really, 2019. So to find the next Soler — and we can’t find the exact Soler, because his 12 home runs wouldn’t have qualified him for this game (sorry, Ty France!) — we need to find someone who hasn’t gotten a lot of at-bats in the past but displayed a lot of power either in the minors or in part-time major league roles.
I’ve pinpointed four. In no particular order.
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1. In 2018, Enriqué Hernández hit 21 home runs over 402 at-bats for the Dodgers. In 2019, it was 17 over 414. Moving to the hitter-friendly Fenway Park, THE JAKE has Hernández at 16.2 HRs; it’s again the high projection, although most land on an even 16. The cost for Hernández is 17, so we’re actually going backwards on this one if the projections are correct. But if you just look past the models for a moment and remember he hit 21 in what amounted to part-time-ish at-bats and he’s moving to a new park with what appears to be a starting role (and taking over the leadoff spot), this could be 30-home run territory. If we are, indeed, correctly applying the Soler Theorum.
2. J.D. Davis hit 22 home runs in 410 at-bats in 2019. But he has three seasons of 23 or more home runs in the minors, plus a 17-HR campaign over 333 at-bats in 2017. All sings point to Davis locking down the third base job for the Mets, which should get him 550 at-bats and a shot at 30-40 home runs. THE JAKE is not quite in agreement, predicting 19.9. But THE JAKE is still the high projection among the models. THE NANDO wants to project 41, batting in a stacked lineup with a lot of OBP potential around him. What about Jeff McNeil? you might ask. Sure, he can develop more power, off the 23 he had in 2019, but he had 510 at-bats and doesn’t fit into the Soler mold of limited at-bats.
3. Ryan McMahon will cost you 24 home runs, which he hit over 480 at-bats in 2019. So he’s on the high-end of the Soler comp. But this is the first season he’ll get true full-time starter at-bats, and he’s still just 26 years old. McMahon has two seasons of 18 home runs and one of 20 in the minors, with three seasons of 39 or more doubles (40 is usually the magic number for me in terms of doubles turning into home runs, and he’s done that almost three times). Can he get up to 40 home runs? Probably not. But 30 isn’t out of the question, and he doesn’t carry as much risk as some other bats in this area.
4. Jesse Winker became adept at hitting high-teens HRs in about a half-season’s (or two-thirds of a season’s) worth of at-bats in the minors. So we can just say he would’ve paced at about 25. He hit 16 home runs in the majors over 338 at-bats in 2019 and then hit 12 in 149 at-bats last year. Part-time player, check. Power in the minors, check. 6-foot-4, 235? Almost check (Winker is 6-foot-3, 215). At just 16 homers against the budget, Winker could double his price.
4. Khris Davis has his own category
Just a reminder that Khris Davis only costs 23 home runs against your HR total, as his down season in 2019 followed years of 42, 43 and 48 home runs. If you want to call his 2019 just a weird funky injury-fueled slump, he’s a great bargain. If, however, this is the beginning of a downturn for Davis — and he now has a spring training leg injury, which doesn’t help — that 23 price tag could knock out some players with big upside potential (C.J. Cron, José Ramirez) who fall around the same area.
5. A quick Ozzie Albies note, because I’m really considering him in this group of seven
Ozzie Albies has two straight seasons (not counting 2020) of 24 home runs. If you believe he’ll develop more power at the age of 24 in what is essentially a similar situation as 2018-2019, everything above 24 is profit.
My team
My first pass looked like this. This was for real and not just done for dramatic purposes to make the column more enjoyable:
Bahhhhhhhhhh. So now we start again. Davis, Winker, Dahl, Gallo are non-negotiable staying in.
At this point, I have my bargains and I just want to accrue home runs. So I’m paying up for either Alonso or Álvarez. And Álvarez has bad knees. Alonso has been relatively healthy.
Vlad’s 15 could turn into 30-32, so I’d like to keep him in:
Now I can go 26 home runs. C.J. Cron is at 25. And that could be a 40-home run season in Colorado. He’s so trendy and I hate it. And I bet half the teams have him. But I don’t care. I want home runs, and Cron will give them to me in this specific spot.
With a homer to spare!
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So this is going over to Paul, and Sias, and we’ll see where we end up come September.
Feel free to chime in below. This is a funky exercise, but it’s such a fun game to monitor over the course of a season. Now we just have to hope that Jesse Winker really is the next Jorge Soler.
(Top photo: Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images)
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