This article is part of our MLB Picks series.
Here's my primary recommendation for betting on the Home Run Derby: pick a player you enjoy rooting for, don't think too hard about it, settle in with some friends and enjoy the show. It's a spectacle that exists purely for entertainment, where the winner is decided as often by skill as it is by whether or not anyone feels like enforcing the rule that pitchers can't throw the next ball until the previous one lands. (Spoiler alert: nobody ever does.)
That said, I've done plenty of overthinking about the event in recent days in hopes of finding an edge, so I'll share the results with you today.
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My first goal was to determine whether there are any stats that have correlated with doing well in the event in recent seasons. The Derby switched to its current format in 2015, going from a swing limit to a time limit and converting the entire tournament into a single-elimination, head-to-head contest. Conveniently, 2015 was also the first year of Statcast. That gives us 49 pairings — seven apiece in seven years' worth of Derbies, with no event held in 2020 — we can analyze to determine which stats best predict the winner of a given matchup.
The stats I looked at were max exit velocity, average exit velocity, average launch angle, barrel rate, hard-hit rate and pull rate. As is the case with many similar questions, the answer as to which metric was the most predictive for winning a Home Run Derby matchup was indeed barrel rate. The hitter who led a given pairing in that statistic won 65 percent of the time. Max exit velocity also showed promise, while pull percentage has actually been a slight negative.
You might be able to do a multivariate regression on these six (and more) variables and come up with a magical formula to predict the derby winner, but I'd caution against that approach, primarily because we only have 49 historical pairings we're working with. The error bars would be too large to rely on such a system with confidence when, again, which batting-practice pitcher breaks the rules the most to deliver pitches the fastest could well be the determining factor on Monday.
I do want to drill down further on the single stat which has proven most predictive in past Derbies, however. Making lots of ideal contact is unsurprisingly a great way to succeed at a Home Run Derby, and the more barrels, the better. Hitters whose barrel rate beat their opponents by less than four points won their derby pairing 13 out of 25 times, good for a modest 52 percent mark. Those who had an advantage in barrel rate of at least four points won 19 out of the 24 remaining matchups, however, good for a winning percentage of 79 percent.
This year's contestants are packed close together in barrel rate, with the exception of Adley Rutschman:
| Seed | Player | Barrel Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luis Robert | 15.6% |
| 2 | Pete Alonso | 15.0% |
| 3 | Mookie Betts | 12.8% |
| 4 | Adolis Garcia | 16.2% |
| 5 | Randy Arozarena | 14.8% |
| 6 | Vladimir Guerrero Jr. | 13.8% |
| 7 | Julio Rodriguez | 10.0% |
| 8 | Adley Rutschman | 6.4% |
If we just used the two buckets above, splitting the potential pairings into those with greater or lesser than four points of barrel rate separating them, nearly all would fall into the former bucket. However, we can smooth things out by getting the trend line generated by all 49 historical pairings to estimate the odds that a player with each of the actual barrel-rate gaps present in this tournament will win their respective pairings. Here's how that system projects each contest would do against each of the others:
| Odds that ↓ will defeat → | Luis Robert | Pete Alonso | Mookie Betts | Adolis Garcia | Randy Arozarena | Vladimir Guerrero | Julio Rodriguez | Adley Rutschman |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luis Robert | N/A | 58.4% | 62.6% | 40.4% | 58.8% | 60.7% | 67.8% | 74.6% |
| Pete Alonso | 41.6% | N/A | 61.4% | 40.4% | 43.1% | 59.6% | 66.7% | 73.5% |
| Mookie Betts | 37.4% | 38.6% | N/A | 36.3% | 38.9% | 40.8% | 62.6% | 69.3% |
| Adolis Garcia | 58.4% | 59.6% | 63.7% | N/A | 59.9% | 61.8% | 69.0% | 75.7% |
| Randy Arozarena | 41.2% | 56.9% | 61.1% | 40.1% | N/A | 59.2% | 66.3% | 73.1% |
| Vladimir Guerrero | 39.3% | 40.4% | 59.2% | 38.2% | 40.8% | N/A | 64.4% | 71.2% |
| Julio Rodriguez | 32.2% | 33.3% | 37.4% | 31.0% | 33.7% | 35.6% | N/A | 64.1% |
| Adley Rutschman | 25.4% | 26.5% | 30.7% | 24.3% | 26.9% | 28.8% | 35.9% | N/A |
Based on the estimates from the table above, the following bets stand out for the first round:
- Adolis Garcia def. Randy Arozarena -140 (DraftKings) — 59.9% per this system, 58.3% implied probability per the odds, so not exactly a steal
- Luis Robert Jr. def. Adley Rutschman -215 (DraftKings) — 74.6% per my formula, 68.3% according to DraftKings' odds
- Pete Alonso def. Julio Rodriguez -170 (DraftKings) — 66.7% per the table above, 63.0% implied probability per DraftKings
- Mookie Betts def. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. +205 (FanDuel) — 40.8% per this system, just 32.8% according to FanDuel's odds, making this the best bet of Round 1
We can use this system not just for the first round but for the entire tournament, as we can estimate the odds that a given pairing will meet in the second or third round and estimate who's likely to win that hypothetical matchup. Here are the chances this formula gives each player to win the whole thing, alongside the price point at which they begin to look like a good bet.
| Player | Seed | Estimated Winning Chances | Odds in a World with Nothing but Barrel Rate | Odds (DraftKings) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luis Robert | 1 | 21.8% | +360 | +500 |
| Pete Alonso | 2 | 17.4% | +474 | +300 |
| Mookie Betts | 3 | 7.4% | +1243 | +1000 |
| Adolis Garcia | 4 | 23.4% | +328 | +650 |
| Randy Arozarena | 5 | 11.8% | +751 | +950 |
| Vladimir Guerrero Jr. | 6 | 11.8% | +751 | +360 |
| Julio Rodriguez | 7 | 4.1% | +2336 | +550 |
| Adley Rutschman | 8 | 1.9% | +5240 | +1700 |
I named that fourth column the way I did on purpose. If you have a narrative reason you particularly like a guy to win, particularly one of the longer shots, go for it. Anybody can get hot for three rounds, so the long shots are interesting simply by being long shots. In the middle tier, the barrels-only model hates Rodriguez, but he dominated the first two rounds of last year's tournament before running out of steam against Juan Soto in the finals. He's young, but he's experienced in this particular event and gets home-field advantage. I'm fully on board with tossing out the barrels-based model on him entirely, and at a price that doesn't ask him to be much better than a coin flip — if you think he's 53.6 percent likely to win all three rounds, that adds up to +550 — I definitely don't hate it.
Based on just the barrels-based math, three guys stand out to me. They're in the middle of the pack according to the books, but they lead the competitors in barrel rate this season, the stat that's been the most predictive since the derby switched to this format:
- Luis Robert +500 (DraftKings) — He's the number one seed and ranks second in barrel rate among this year's contestants. He also faces Rutschman, the outlier (in the wrong direction) in the first round. He's heating up at the right time, too, homering eight times in his last 15 games.
- Adolis Garcia +700 (FanDuel) — He has the highest barrel rate among all the competitors, so naturally a simple, barrel-rate-based model likes his chances. I'm not sure I'd go all the way to claiming he's the outright favorite like this formula suggests, but I'd be happy to put him in the top tier, not in the bottom half as the actual odds suggest.
- Randy Arozarena +950 (DraftKings) — Arozarena is mispriced according to this simple model, and he seems mispriced if you're willing to lean into narrative arguments as well. Anyone who's watched Arozarena in a tournament setting, whether that's the 2020 postseason or the 2023 World Baseball Classic, knows what he's like when the spotlight's on. I don't doubt he'll be locked in; my only worry is he'll have to get through Garcia and likely Robert just to get to the final.
