As the MLB All-Star break comes to a wrap, we saw a great show of the premier power hitters in the league during the Home Run Derby. Cal Raleigh continued upon his regular season dominance, by winning the 2025 Home Run Derby, but many young and veteran names all gave a great effort.
Although the focus is on homeruns during this event, there is so much more to a player's contribution in a game. The Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic measures offensive and defensive contributions from a player compared to the teams backup for them, their replacement.
In this study, I focused on analyzing the contribution of homeruns to each Home Run Derby contestant's WAR statistics for the 2025 season. The data was sourced from Pro Baseball Reference and then filtered to only include players with at least one homerun and eliminate duplicates of players that switched teams mid-season.
Determining the Average HR Contribution to WAR
When looking at the 2025 season and MLB players with at least one homerun, a linear trendline was applied to a scatterplot comparing WAR and HRs. The results showed that on average across the players in the dataset, each homerun contributed 0.1244 to a player's WAR. This average contribution was used as the baseline for the Home Run Derby contestants to see how much of their WAR is contributed by homeruns.
Analyzing WAR Contribution for the 2025 Home Run Derby Contestants
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| Blue - eliminated 1st round, Green - eliminated 2nd round, Gold - made it to the finals |
Using the 0.1244 WAR per HR average, I calculated the proportion each Home Run Derby contestant's WAR contributed by homeruns. In the visual above, some players like Matt Olson and James Wood, have a lower contribution from homeruns and it suggests they provide a lot of value elsewhere like perhaps on the defensive side out in the field. On the other side, Oneil Cruz and Junior Caminero have a very high proportion, nearly doubling their actual WAR with projected WAR contribution from homeruns. This suggests that their contribution and value added to the team comes from their power hitting ability.
I also noted that the gold glovers in the group, Matt Olson, Byron Buxton, and Cal Raleigh, are all closer to the top of the chart with a lower proportion of WAR coming from homeruns. This would be expected because they provide a lot of value on the defensive side.
Could James Wood be a future gold glover? He is certainly in good company with a low proportion of WAR from homeruns, despite his excellence at the plate in his young career. Wood's statistical numbers suggest that his defensive play is very strong and it definitely could lead to a gold glove one day.
Another note I made from this visual is that a higher proportion of WAR from homeruns tended to lead to more Home Run Derby success. The players that advanced to the second round and the finals are grouped closer to the bottom of the chart, suggesting that pure power players had more success in this years Home Run Derby.
Conclusion
When looking at the 2025 Home Run Derby, the field consisted on pure power hitters that contributed a very high proportion of their WAR from homeruns. But, there were also plenty in the field that were star defenders having strong contributions elsewhere on the field. This was a very fun analysis on which player type had more success in the 2025 Home Run Derby and also how much having won a gold glove in the past played a factor in determining the proportion levels.
Although there were not a lot of visuals or in-depth analysis in this article, I hope you found it interesting. Thanks for reading!
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