A Completely Ill-Advised Way To Pick MLB Home Run Derby Winners

Now that baseball’s power nap is officially here and the stars are cuddling in St. Louis, we get the fun-filled challenge of keeping ourselves awake until games return on Thursday.

It’s harder than you think.

Rarely is the All-Star Game what it’s cracked up to be, meaning Monday night—Night of the Long Ball—is where the magic happens.

At first glance, the National League home run derby participants rest in another planet compared to the American League batch.

It didn’t have to be that way, but Josh Hamilton tore an abdominal muscle, Alex Rodriguez isn’t even here, and Ichiro thinks he can still hide his magnificent batting practice displays from the eyes of the nation.

Fine, then. Since the only thing for sure is that I have no idea how the derby is going to play out Monday night in St. Louis, we are going to take a paradoxical joy ride down derby lane to find our winner. Hopefully we luck into the right pick, fellas...

First up for the A.L. is Nelson Cruz from the Texas Rangers. It’s been a long, sad history of Cruz’s in the major leagues, and baseball-reference.com counts 17 of them, including our boy Nelson here. You would be hard-pressed to tell me one thing about any of these guys on this list, so that can’t be a good thing.

The only other Nelsons I know are Mandela and some kid who was few years older than me in my neighborhood, had a good high school career, and then had his playing days wilt in college.

One point for the Nobel Peace Prize, minus 30 points for having a fluky “power” hitter in the derby. Cruz had 22 homers in the first half, while playing in Arlington. Cruz’s home run totals from the last three seasons combined equal his first half output this year, so this ain’t happening.

Prince Fielder, come on down. I love, love, love the possibilities of Prince Fielder in the derby.

I mean, we could see Fielder hit balls off of the arch in the Lou, or we could see him swing and miss and snap his bat over his knee. We could see him pull a Hamilton, or we could see him pull an oblique, while desperately trying to hit the “Hit It Here!” sign.

If you could eat your way into the finals, I would ride Fielder like George Woolf rode Seabiscuit.

But the fact of the matter is you need some endurance for this contest, and Fielder isn’t trying to fool anybody here. He will charm, though, because who doesn’t love a big guy with a big swing and a big smile? So no trophy for Fielder, but what’s the over-under on number of pounds Prince sweats off in muggy Busch Stadium? Four? Six? 19?

If this contest were about falling in love with a swing, Joe Mauer would be the leader in the clubhouse. Mauer’s power has grown exponentially this season, the type of power that we’ve all been waiting for from him, but how do you completely change your approach to compete in the derby?

Mauer is a pure hitter, which is what you want to be. But when you make a living pounding line drives to the gaps, it’s awfully hard to start pounding the ball out of the yard on command.

Plus, we have to account for the Minnesota Twins' derby jinx that is now in full effect.

Josh Hamilton is what we remember from last year’s derby in the old Yankee Stadium. But somehow, someway, Minnesota’s Justin Morneau “won” the thing because he hit more homers than Hamilton in the final round. That was after Hamilton crushed 28 in the opening round.

Blame it on the dumb rule that homers don’t carry over to the finals or whatever you want, but after Morneau ate the cake at Hamilton’s party, you think anybody up in the heavens is going to let another Twinkie win it anytime soon? Me either.

You can’t really go wrong by picking Ryan Howard to win it, but something tells me a lot of skied fly balls are in the near future for Howard. If Howard hit at only 70 percent effort, he would probably hit 50 homers because that’s the sick kind of power he has.

We know Howard is going to swing like the Hulk dressed in red, but there’s only one Red Hulk at this dance and he isn’t feasting on Subway one out of every eight commercials.

Next.

Carlos Pena is an interesting late addition to the A.L. roster and the derby. Pena has the pop, but unless he is able to put a cap on his adrenaline (which is nearly impossible), he is going to be hitting screaming duck hooks into right field.

His buddy Longoria will be begging Pena to make up for the mess he made at last year’s derby when Longoria single-handedly sucked the helium out of the Bronx, all while Ben Zobrist is sitting there thinking, “I’m the one who is worthy of the show!”

I don’t like those odds.

Brandon Inge. Great guy. Great athlete. Great teammate. Add ‘imp’ to the beginning of his name and ‘ment’ to the end, and that’s exactly what Tiger’s GM Dave Dombrowski is fearing over the next 48 hours. Detroit is 3.5 games up in the A.L. Central, and the Tigers need Inge in the second half.

Sorry, I’m not going to be the one to ruin the best thing Detroit has going this summer.

That leaves us with two left, my finalists, and everybody and their momma is going to be pulling for Albert Pujols. There are two things that scare me about Pujols in this derby:

1) He is so locked in that I could see him hitting 10 straight line drives off the wall in right center, none of which get higher than 10 feet off the ground, and thus not advancing to the second round;

2) The pressure to win for the home crowd is going to be ridiculously high that even Pujols may try to do too much. If the bet is Pujols or the field, I have to take the field. Sadly.

Which means in some wacky way, I’m taking the lone Padre to take the derby home, Mr. Adrian Gonzalez. Gonzalez has 24 homers at the break—that looks like 100 considering he plays in Petco Park—and continues to be the most underrated player in baseball.

Nobody talks about him because the Padres stink, and he’s not demanding to be traded or paid $20 million a year.

But hey, if you can be the best player on a horrendous team, rake while playing home games in the Grand Canyon, be content with being paid about a fifth of what you’re worth (compared to the market), and put a smile on your face, while your family receives death threats from radicals in Tijuana, Mexico, you deserve some national praise.

So give me Gonzalez over Pujols Monday evening. Then again, what do I know?

You can reach Teddy Mitrosilis at [e-mail].