Baseball’s Home Run Derby: The Ultimate Hitter’s Curse?

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JESSICA RINALDI/Reuters/Corbis

Sluggers beware — taking part in the midsummer classic’s main power show often makes for a power outage during the rest of the season.

Celebrating its 25th year of existence, the Home Run Derby has grown into primetime television phenomenon. Fans grow captivated by the opportunity to watch the glorified batting practice, in hopes of witnessing home runs that travel at rates rarely ever seen in normal game settings.

But for the players standing at home plate, finding their rhythm at the derby has been statistically linked to a second-half falloff. Sports Illustrated’s Tim Marchman takes a look at a figure other than home runs: slugging percentage (for novices, it’s the number of total bases divided by at-bats. Marchman points to a recent Hardball Times study shows that of the 80 participants in the Home Run Derby since 2000, 39 have seen their slugging percentage drop in second-half play by at least .25 points.

So why are so many hitters biting the baseball dust? The Detroit News’ Tony Paul chalks off the “curse” as a reality of the natural fatigue of playing a 162-game season.