Every year around this time, the same thing happens: Eight sluggers get selected to participate in the Home Run Derby, and eight fan bases fret that doing so will "mess up their swing" and doom them to a less productive second half. Why bother risking important games in a potential

Every year around this time, the same thing happens: Eight sluggers get selected to participate in the Home Run Derby, and eight fan bases fret that doing so will "mess up their swing" and doom them to a less productive second half. Why bother risking important games in a potential playoff push simply to take part in what is a fun but ultimately meaningless exhibition?

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That would be a valid concern ... if it were true. It's not. The Home Run Derby doesn't cause players to have poor second halves, at least not any more than simply "being an All-Star" does, and no one talks about the "All-Star curse," do they?

We looked into this a few years ago, for what it's worth, but since the myth seems to persist, let's update the numbers. It's true that a lot of these players have lesser numbers in the second half. It's also true that there are two very good reasons for that.

• T-Mobile Home Run Derby: Monday July 8, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN

First, the simple one:

1) The "first half" isn't really a half.

Right. If we're looking merely at "number of home runs," well, you should pretty much expect that everyone will hit fewer in the second half. Last year, Alex Bregman had 434 plate appearances (and 20 homers) before the break. You'll note that he did not end up with nearly 900 plate appearances in the full season. (He had 271 more plate appearances, and 11 homers, in the second "half.")

Now, the more important one:

2) You only get chosen to be in the Derby because you're having a great first half.

This is the thing. This is the thing all the time. If you're an entrant in the Home Run Derby -- or the All-Star Game -- it's because you're by definition having a wonderfully great first half, often better than you've ever done before, and those are difficult to maintain over the course of a full season.

When we dug into this back in 2017, the way we showed this was to compare Home Run Derby participants in 2014, '15, and '16 to All-Star hitters in those three years who weren't in the Derby. As the results showed, "being in the Derby" didn't, on average, hurt hitters any more than "being an All-Star" did. That makes sense, intuitively, because both groups of players had to have a great first half to get there, and not everyone can keep that up.

A quick look at last 3 yrs shows that being in the HR derby doesn't hurt you any more than just being an All-Star:https://t.co/9LgxcH7phX pic.twitter.com/FKA5KYyV2m — Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) July 7, 2017

So: Has anything changed over the last two years? Let's find out.

In 2017, well, the myth doesn't even hold up, to be honest, because we don't even have to explain why it's unusual that some hitters would do worse in the second half. Three of them didn't.

These five players did worse after the Derby, if we look at simple OPS...

-.200 points // Aaron Judge, 1.139 to .939

-.164 points // Miguel Sano, .906 to .742

-.074 points // Justin Bour, .923 to .849

-.065 points // Mike Moustakas, .863 to .798

-.060 points // Cody Bellinger, .961 to .901

... and these three players got better.

+.162 points // Giancarlo Stanton, .933 to 1.095

+.114 points // Charlie Blackmon, .950 to 1.064

+.046 points // Gary Sanchez, .850 to .896

So right away, there's not much here -- Stanton, you might remember, had his swing screwed up so badly that he went on to hit 59 homers that year -- and it falls apart even more when you realize why some of those declines happened. Sano injured his shin in August and missed most of the second half before undergoing surgery. Bour injured his oblique. Bellinger missed time with an injured ankle; Judge was still one of the 15 best hitters in baseball in the second half.

All told, the eight Home Run Derby players in 2017 declined from .945 in the first half to .934 in the second half, which is to say they barely declined at all. They performed about the same.

Meanwhile, the non-Derby All-Stars who got into the game dropped from .905 in the first half to .818 in the second half. That's an 87-point drop, far more than the Derby participants, full of stories like Corey Dickerson posting a .903 OPS in the first half and a .690 OPS in the second half. Participating in the Derby doesn't hurt you so much as simply being an All-Star does, because you're specifically selecting players who got off to fantastic -- and in some cases, unsustainable -- starts.

In 2018, we saw something different. The eight Home Run Derby players declined from .908 in the first half to .866 in the second half.

These five did worse ...

-.235 points // Jesús Aguilar, .995 to .760

-.133 points // Kyle Schwarber, .873 to .740

-.111 points // Freddie Freeman, .938 to .827

-.094 points // Max Muncy, 1.013 to .919

-.026 points // Javier Báez, .892 to .866

... one did about exactly the same ...

-.006 points // Alex Bregman, .928 to .922

... and these two did better.

+.139 points // Bryce Harper, .833 to .972

+.069 points // Rhys Hoskins, .819 to .888

That might seem to confirm the myth, that there was a 42-point drop from the first half to the second half among participants. It might, except that the the non-Derby All-Stars who got into the game did much, much worse. They declined from .884 in the first half to .808 in the second half. That's a drop of 76 points.

We'll even take a look at this year's participants to try to see if we can guess which direction things might go. We'll actually make two predictions about it, for your entertainment:

• Carlos Santana is having the best start of his career (.302/.420/.548, 146 OPS+), a line that's better than any half or full season in his career dating back to 2010. It's a great start, but he's 33 and has never shown power like this before. We think he'll do worse.

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr., despite all the hype, has hit a mere .248/.328/.416, and a league-average 100 OPS+. We think he'll be better.

We can't guarantee that participating in the Derby is going to help your swing, though it certainly didn't hurt Harper last year. All we can say for certain is that it's not going to destroy it, not any more than just showing up in Cleveland as an All-Star might otherwise.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. You don't get into either the Derby or the Game without having had an incredibly impressive first half. But by virtue of having done that, you've now likely set up expectations that are nearly impossible to match. We don't talk about the "All-Star Game curse," really, not nearly as much as the supposed Derby curse. Maybe we should.