Participating in the Home Run Derby wasn’t always something that was celebrated. While the event has always been beloved, old wives’ tales told us they would ruin the swing of a player and hurt his second-half production.
By now we know this isn’t true, but Julio Rodríguez experienced some of this Derby curse last season with the wrist injury he sustained as a result of his participation. His performance didn’t suffer, however, posting a 169 wRC+ in the second half. This figure was 33 points higher than his first-half number.
Now let me be clear, I am not drawing any conclusions between the derby and Rodríguez’s second half. However, his derby performance shows us a big-time key that could spark a second-half run for Julio. Pull the baseball.
