Monday night is the Home Run Derby, at 8:00 PM Eastern on ESPN. HitTracker is a site that attempts to track and graph every home run hit, so I thought it would be a good way to preview how each of the participants may hit in the contest in Yankee Stadium.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to determine whether I'm allowed to post the graphs on my own site, so to be safe (yet boring), you're stuck with links.
First, here's the layout of Yankee Stadium.
Here are the home run charts of the eight participants:
Lance Berkman
Ryan Braun
Josh Hamilton
Evan Longoria
Justin Morneau
Grady Sizemore
Dan Uggla
Chase Utley
Yankee Stadium is known for its short right field and deep left/left-center field. As the only righties in the contest so far, that puts Dan Uggla, Evan Longoria, and Ryan Braun at as disadvantage. Uggla and Longoria are especially at a disadvantage, as almost all of their power is to left field this year. Braun, meanwhile, has hit his share of opposite field homers. It will be interesting to see what switch hitter Lance Berkman does this time around. He's traditionally batted from the right side in home run derbies, even when the situation dictated that he'd have an advantage as a lefty.
