Baseball loves its superstitions: Pregame chicken dinners, rally caps, never referencing an active no-hitter, purposely avoiding (or stepping on) the foul line.
It's easy, therefore, to fall prey to belief in one of our game's more modern hexes: The Home Run Derby Curse.
It's a jinx that has befallen such past participants as Bobby Abreu (2005), David Wright (2006) and Todd Frazier (2015), and its negative influence concerns fans and fantasy managers alike of Cal Raleigh, James Wood and Junior Caminero, three of this year's competitors.
There's just one problem: This "curse" is complete hogwash.
To explain, the other thing us baseball-ites seem to love is cherry-picking examples that suit our arguments for such wild theories. While it's true that Abreu, Wright and Frazier each hit at least 12 fewer home runs and registered a wOBA at least 50 points lower after participating in the Home Run Derby than before it in those seasons, the larger sample reflects no rhyme or reason to the effects of participation on players' second-half performance. Moreover, closer examination reveals that participants' second-half statistical declines are no more severe -- and, in fact, less so -- than that of similar power hitters who opt to skip the midsummer contest, like Aaron Judge this year.
First, the facts: Across the past nine seasons that featured a Home Run Derby, spanning the Statcast era, participants in the midsummer contest averaged 6.5 fewer home runs after the break than before it. This decrease looks significant, but it's tempered by the fact that baseball typically schedules its All-Star break noticeably after the mathematical midpoint of the season.
Considering that in those same nine seasons, 56% of the year's MLB schedule had already been played at the time of the Home Run Derby, the participant pool should have averaged 4.5 fewer second- than first-half homers adjusting for games/opportunity alone. That means that we're talking about these hitters slipping only two homers beneath their first-half paces.
The other factor dispelling the curse is that Derby participants typically earn their entries thanks to big, and often unexpected, first halves in the power department. Raleigh, the top home run hitter among this year's contestants, has hit 7.6 more homers than expected, per Statcast, the widest such differential in baseball. Wood, second among 2025 competitors, leads the majors in HR/FB percentage (23.8%). Both should be expected to regress to a certain degree in the coming weeks, but hardly resulting from any such curse.
This bears itself out historically. During those same past nine seasons with a Home Run Derby, there were an equal number of Derby participants as there were top-10 MLB home run hitter non-participants (72 apiece) -- again, Judge being a prime such 2025 example. The latter group saw a significantly greater rate of decline in terms of home run rate (minus-1.3% of plate appearances) and expected home run rate (minus-1.0%) after the break competed to the former group (minus-0.6% and minus-0.5%).
To analyze a more comprehensive hitter profile than merely home runs, a greater percentage of non-participant, top-10 home run hitters declined in wOBA after the break (71%) than did Derby contestants (61%).
As for whether specific types of hitters might be subject to such a curse, consider that all of the following also reflected a lesser rate of second-half decline in the above categories than did top-10, non-participant homer hitters at the break: Derby champions, three-round Derby contestants, and hitters with 20-plus Derby homers.
And for you Raleigh worriers, the three catchers among this Derby pool, Gary Sanchez (2017), Salvador Perez (2021) and Adley Rutschman (2023), each actually improved in home run rate (up 1.5%) -- and all three managed greater second- than first-half wOBAs in those campaigns.
The bottom line is that if you're worried about that big-time home run hitter slowing down during the season's second half, you'd have cause to be, but it shouldn't have anything to do with his Home Run Derby participation.