STANTON POWERS UP IN HOME RUN DERBY
The All-Star Home Run Derby couldn’t have asked for a better matchup in this year’s final: defending champion Todd Frazier vs. the Sultan of Statcast, Giancarlo Stanton.
In the end, Stanton’s raw power trumped Frazier’s Derby experience as the Miami Marlins slugger prevailed with relative ease, winning 20-13 against the Chicago White Sox third baseman on Monday.
Stanton set the bar high in the final round, with 11 of his home runs surpassing the 440-foot mark. Over the Derby’s three rounds he totaled 61 homers, with 64% (39) traveling over 440 feet.
MLB’s Statcast technology has made it much easier over the last two seasons to measure how hard and how far players hit the ball, and Stanton has been routinely among the best in the major leagues.
He led all players last season with an average exit velocity of 98.5 mph — nearly 4 mph ahead of everyone else.
In 2016, Stanton is tied for fourth (95.0 mph) and has the six highest single exit velocities recorded.
Stanton had the longest home run of the night — a 497-foot shot in the first round.
In a ballpark notoriously stingy in giving up home runs throughout its 15-year history, Stanton made Petco Park look like a hitters’ haven in winning for the first time in his two Home Run Derby appearances.
Since it opened in 2002, Petco has historically ranked at or near the bottom of the park factor ratings in scoring, home runs or both. However, new construction around the park in recent years — combined with minor reductions in the distance of the outfield fences in 2013 — might have finally turned the tables.
“They put up a couple new buildings in the backdrop that I believe helps the ball fly,” home- town favorite Wil Myers of the San Diego Padres said earlier Monday at a pre-Derby news conference.
According to ESPN’s Park Factor calculations, Petco is tied with Fenway Park in Boston as the 10th-best venue for scoring in the first half of the 2016 season. And it ranks 15th in promoting home runs, playing almost perfectly neutral.
“I just think this is a park that I see the ball well at and it’s got a great hitters’ eye and I have just always seen the ball well here,” Myers said.
Frazier and Stanton didn’t have any problem seeing the ball in the San Diego twilight.
Frazier was making his third consecutive appearance in the championship round, winning it last season in Cincinnati and finishing second the year before in Minneapolis.
Frazier eliminated Carlos Gonzalez 13-12 in the first round and Adam Duvall 16-15 in the semifinals.
Stanton, the No. 5 seed after finishing the first half with 20 homers, easily dispatched 2011 Home Run Derby champion Robinson Cano in the opening round and defeated the majors’ leading home run hitter, Mark Trumbo, in the semifinals.