Andrew McCutchen to Replace Stanton in Home-Run Derby

Tonight at 8:49 Eastern time Karl Ravech of ESPN tweeted that Andrew McCutchen is to replace Giancarlo Stanton in the 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star Game Home-run Derby. At this point the move is basically official, we are still waiting on the MLB to confirm the tweet but basically everyone else has said it to be true. Stanton announced that he would not be participating in the derby and all star game after he found out that he was going to have to have surgery on his knee, Bryce Harper will be replacing him on the team its self.

This move comes not as a huge surprise I guess as McCutchen ranks sixth in the NL in home-runs with 16 to this point in the season. McCutchen is obviously not just a huge slugger like someone who typically come to mind when you think of the home-run derby, as he has the highest batting average in all of the major leagues at .359. The other seven participants include Prince Fielder, Robinson Cano, Jose Bautista, Mark Trumbo, and for the National League Matt Kemp, Carlos Gonzalez, Carlos Beltran and of course Andrew McCutchen. This is kind of exciting for the Pirates and the city of Pittsburgh as it will give the team some nice national attention, well deserved  for the season they have had so far.

Some people in the blogosphere seem to be upset about McCutchen being in the derby as they claim that it will mess up his swing for the second half of the season. People have been making these claims for just about as long as they have been having the event and hardly ever do they prove to be true. Obviously there are some cases where some of the participants have fell off greatly such as in the case of Brandon Inge in 2009 or Dan Uggla in 2008 but its hard to even blame these drop offs on the derby and not just natural regression after outstanding first half's. Since 2000 43% of hitters in the derby have actually improved onward from the event, a high enough percentage to prove that regression is not a given. Naturally you would expect all-stars to regress the second half as well because most of the time they are putting up career high numbers which are hard to maintain for an entire season as is the case for McCutchen. So if you see McCutchen fall down to a .300 BA the second half and only hits 12 home-runs don't go blaming it on the derby because a return to human form can be almost expected at some point.

If you are interested in watching the event you can check into ESPN on Monday night and watch the whole thing. I myself enjoy watching the event as it is a nice warm-up before a very boring all-star game which you can watch the following night, Tuesday. If you are going to only watch part of the derby make sure to watch McCutchen's swings because the national analysts will probably spend a good amount of that time talking about the magnificent things the Pirates are doing so far this year, should be fun to watch.