Meet Bryson Daily, the driving force behind Army’s unbeaten season
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
WEST POINT, N.Y. — Mike Viti, Army’s assistant head coach for offense, still has his first evaluation of Bryson Daily on his computer after seeing tape of Daily as a high school prospect.
The report reads like it might have come from a back alley, maybe even an underground fight club, instead of a football field.
“It looked like he was in a street fight every time he carried the ball,” Viti said. “He looked like he was fighting, just a different running style. And then you find out he was a hurdler on the track team and a coach’s kid, and you get real excited.
“You knew you were watching a brawler.”
Viti, a former fullback at Army, recruits western Texas for the Black Knights, and when he says “football player” in describing Army’s record-setting quarterback, he means it.
As they say in West Texas, they make ’em a little tougher in those parts. Daily started at quarterback for Abernathy High, a school with 230 students located 20 miles north of Lubbock, from the time he was a ninth grader and led the Antelopes to the 3A state semifinals that season. He played for his father, Darrell Daily, and was more than just a quarterback. He also played linebacker, and in crucial situations would kick field goals and punt.
As a freshman, he helped beat one of Abernathy’s top rivals with a game-winning 27-yard field goal.
“Of course, if you ask him now, he would say it was a 47-yarder,” his father joked.
Daily also played point guard on the basketball team (he moved to the post if the other team had a big bruiser down low), pitched and played shortstop on the baseball team and ran hurdles and threw the discus on the track team.
“He screamed out that he was an Army football player, everything we’re looking for here,” Black Knights coach Jeff Monken said.
Daily’s play this season has screamed out even louder, as he leads the unbeaten and No. 19 Black Knights against No. 6 Notre Dame on Saturday night in Yankee Stadium. Army hasn’t played a game with national implications this high in decades, as the prime-time matchup has College Football Playoff ramifications for both sides. The Black Knights are two-touchdown underdogs.
“I think we do feed off that a little bit,” Daily said. “A lot of guys, like myself, only had FCS offers coming out of high school, a ton of our starters. But we’ve won all nine of our games this year, and those schools we’ve beaten wouldn’t have even thought about recruiting us. It’s the same with this game. Obviously, Notre Dame has top recruits, a top program, a lot of money, all that stuff.
“But the only thing we’re looking at is that it’s a great opportunity for us, and we’re excited to go play.”
DAILY, A SENIOR captain, has been the face of this Army team, which has matched the best start in program history. The 1949 team, under legendary coach Earl “Red” Blaik, finished the season 9-0.
“Tough as s—,” Monken said of the 6-foot, 221-pound Daily, who has been a battering ram at quarterback for Army’s triple-option attack that leads the country in rushing (334.9 yards per game).
That description fits just about every player in a program that breeds brotherhood, and as Monken is fond of saying, is the “last of the hard,” a throwback to the days before big money — for blueblood programs, administrators, coaches and now players — dominated the sport.
On the field, Daily takes Monken’s “last of the hard” mantra to another level.
“Bryson wants to punish you,” Army center Brady Small said. “He runs hard. He does everything hard, and what he does for us as a leader is just as important. When we see him lower that shoulder, whether it’s for an extra yard or 2 yards, that’s why we love him. It’s never about him.”
Daily ranks fifth nationally in rushing (132.7 yards per game) and is tied for second nationally with 21 rushing touchdowns. The only player with more touchdowns is Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty with 26, but Jeanty has played in two more games than Daily.
Daily and Jeanty are the only two players averaging more than 6 yards per carry and more than 20 carries per game. In his past two outings, Daily has bulldozed his way to a combined 67 rushing attempts, including 36 carries in Army’s 14-3 win over North Texas two weeks ago. The 36 carries were the most by an FBS player this season.
Daily is anything but your stereotypical running quarterback. His forte is power, not speed, meaning defenders tend to see a lot more of the front of his No. 13 jersey than they do the back.
“I’m not blessed with the speed that some guys have, so I have to take a few more shots,” Daily said. “But I enjoy contact. It’s always been a part of my personality. A lot of that comes from playing linebacker in the past and the mentality I grew up with playing for my dad. That’s the kind of program he ran, built on toughness. There wasn’t any other way to play the game.”
As tough as he is, Daily is not immune to injuries, and he missed the Air Force game Nov. 2, two weeks removed from a six-touchdown performance (5 rushing, 1 passing) in a 45-28 win over East Carolina. He carried the ball 31 times in that game and practiced the next week, although the Black Knights didn’t have a game that weekend.
But heading into the week of preparations for the Air Force game, Daily was sidelined with what Army officials termed an undisclosed injury/illness. He had contracted a painful infection in his foot that required a procedure to drain the swelling. Daily said he couldn’t even get his foot in a shoe, let alone put any pressure on it. He still doesn’t know how he got the infection.
“That’s football. You get hit as much as he has, and then something freaky like that takes you out,” said Darrell Daily, who spent the Saturday of the Air Force game in the hospital with his son.
Not being out there with his teammates for a service academy game was bad enough for Bryson Daily. But to make matters worse, he couldn’t get the game on television in his hospital room. There was a problem streaming the game on his laptop, and he missed part of the first quarter before finally getting the computer going.
“He about threw that sucker across the room,” Darrell Daily said. “It killed his soul not to be able to play in that game because he won both Commander-In-Chief games last year as a starting quarterback. But he was confident that [backup] Dewayne [Coleman] would step in for him and handle things.”
Army won 20-3 without him, but Bryson Daily was determined to get back for the North Texas game. Once the swelling subsided, he was back at practice, but did very little the week of the game, again placing his status in question.
“He walked through on Thursday and went through their pregame stuff on Friday and then went out there and carried the ball 36 times,” Darrell Daily said. “I’m not sure anybody or anything was going to keep him out of that game.”
NOW, WITH ANOTHER bye week to get healthier, Bryson Daily and Army get to play on their biggest stage yet in what has been a remarkable season for the Black Knights. One of just three unbeaten FBS teams with Oregon and Indiana, Army is the only one that has won every game by double digits. But it hasn’t faced any team the caliber of Notre Dame, which has given up just seven rushing touchdowns in 10 games.
Daily, one of 29 Texans on Army’s roster, gets his competitive spirit naturally. He grew up in a family of coaches and athletes. His mother, Christi, coached basketball and track. She and Darrell are retired and living in Wimberley, Texas, which is about 40 miles southwest of Austin.
Both of Daily’s grandfathers were coaches, not to mention one of his grandmothers. Both of his sisters, Brooke and Ali, played sports, and Brooke is a junior high school coach in Wimberley.
“It’s all we’ve known. It’s all Bryson has known, from the time he was in youth leagues and my father-in-law [Buddy Comer] was coaching him,” Darrell Daily said.
Comer was the one who helped Bryson Daily channel his intensity and drive, which occasionally reached the threshold of being more of a negative than a positive when he was younger. Daily hated to lose — and still does. But he learned to turn that anger into a steely determination.
Comer still sends his grandson reminders before games that a “cool head and hot heart” will lead to success. Daily even has “CHHH” tattooed on his arm.
“He’s an alpha leader, and the guys believe in him,” Monken said. “He pushes the other guys and is very demanding, but it’s always with the betterment of the team in mind.”
Daily doesn’t have anybody in his family with a military background, but it was an easy decision for him when Army offered him a scholarship.
“I wanted to play college football at the highest possible level. It didn’t matter where,” Daily said.
The FCS schools in Texas — Stephen F. Austin, Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian — all wanted him and so did several Ivy League schools, but not necessarily as a quarterback. SMU kept him dangling and had one scholarship spot open, but ended up giving it to a player in the transfer portal.
Army recruited Daily as both a quarterback and linebacker and assured him he would get his shot at QB. After visiting West Point, he was sold and felt a close connection with Viti, who was deployed in the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan from 2010-11 before returning to his alma mater to coach. Viti was a platoon leader, and he lived on a combat outpost that was attacked virtually every day by the Taliban.
“Seeing what kind of dude he was and seeing what West Point meant to him and hearing about his service, I knew this was where I belonged,” Daily said. “It wasn’t just about football. It was about being a part of something bigger than just yourself.”
Daily spent his first year at the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School in 2020 after having to delay hernia surgery during the COVID pandemic. That first year helped him prepare for life at the academy. As a freshman the following season, Daily scuffled with the transition from the spread/speed option he ran in high school to Army’s version of the triple option. He appeared in only six games his first two seasons, although he did make the travel roster as a sophomore.
Daily patiently waited his turn and never flinched, even with four or five quarterbacks ahead of him on the roster when he arrived on campus. He knew his time was coming.
“The transfer portal isn’t a factor here,” Monken said. “You’re still able to develop players, have them be around older players and learn and stay together for four years. Bryson bought into that.”
He won the starting job as a junior in 2023 and became only the second Army quarterback to both rush and pass for 900 yards in a season. But the Black Knights had shifted to more of a shotgun/passing attack, in large part because of the rule change the year before that eliminated blocks below the waist outside the tackle box. Army’s offensive numbers tumbled, and the Black Knights finished 6-6 for the second straight season.
This season, Monken decided to go back to a true under-center, triple-option attack based on the power game. The Black Knights went from averaging 20.5 points in 2023 to 35.2 points this season and regained their spot as the country’s top rushing team. They’re averaging 72.1 more yards per game than the No. 2 FBS team (UCF).
“It was a way for us to maybe run some option out of the shotgun and still be different,” Monken said of the unsuccessful experiment a year ago. “But I realized we weren’t different enough. So this year, I came back to getting more under center, going back to our roots a little bit and finding a way to do that without having to rely on the cut block.”
All the while, Daily has flourished. He has attempted just 51 passes, but seven have gone for touchdowns, and he has thrown only one interception. But it’s the running game where he has excelled. He’s not the kind of quarterback who uses his speed to run away from defenders, but he’s quick and uses the next-level cut to find openings a lot of players don’t see.
And when all else fails, he goes into all-out linebacker mode, lowers his pads and essentially says, “May the best man win,” to his would-be tacklers.
“We’ve kind of grown with him, and that’s what you’ve got to do as a good offense,” Viti said. “You’ve got to see who your best players are and play to their strengths.”
Daily’s family will be well represented in New York. His parents, two sisters and one set of grandparents are all making the trip from Texas.
Daily, an engineering management major, has an eye on infantry to begin his military service. But just like his father, he will spend next football season coaching at the prep school at West Point. That time will count as the first six months of Daily’s military service.
But nobody in the Daily family is getting too far ahead of themselves, especially Bryson. There’s a lot more football left to be played, including the American Athletic Conference championship game Dec. 6 and the 125th Army-Navy game on Dec. 14 in Landover, Maryland.
And after that, maybe even a playoff game.
“We’re just trying to enjoy every moment and chase that winning feeling, and that happens by chasing that 1-0 mentality of going 1-0 every week,” Bryson said. “It’s no different this game than it was last game.”
And that’s whether it’s a street fight or fighting to find the goal line against the Fighting Irish.
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Bill Connelly
Back in May, ESPN’s team of college football reporters voted on the sport’s best coaches for 2025. The results were about as you would expect: Start with the three active guys who have most recently won national titles (Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney), move on to guys with recent top-five finishes or national title game appearances (Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Penn State’s James Franklin), then squeeze in a couple of long-term overachievers at the end (Utah’s Kyle Whittingham, Iowa State’s Matt Campbell).
The rankings made plenty of sense, but I couldn’t help but notice that the top eight coaches on the list all work for some of the richest, most well-supported programs in the country. There are some epic pressures associated with leading these programs — just ask Day — but there are also major advantages. It might only take a good head coach to do great things in those jobs, while at programs with smaller alumni bases or lesser historic track records, it might take a great coach to do merely good things. They’re such different jobs that it’s almost impossible to even know how to compare the performance of, say, Matt Campbell to Steve Sarkisian. Could Campbell have led Texas to back-to-back CFP semifinals? Could Sark have brought ISU its first two AP top-15 finishes?
The May rankings made me want to see if there were a way to apply stats to the conversation. If you think about it, we’re basically measuring two things when we’re gauging coach performance: overall quality and quality relative to the expectations of the job. I thought it would be fun to come up with a blend of those two things and see what the results told us.
Performance versus expectation
Gauging overall performance is easy enough. You could simply look at win percentage, and it would tell you quite a bit. From 2015 to 2024, the active coaches with the best FBS win percentages (minimum 30 games) were Day (.870), Lanning (.854), Swinney (.850) and Smart (.847). All ranked high in the May rankings. I tend to want to get fancy and use my SP+ ratings whenever possible, and they tell a similar tale. Looking at average SP+ ratings for the past decade, the top active coaches are Day (30.4), Smart (27.0), Lanning (22.3), Swinney (21.9), Franklin (20.3) and Freeman (19.0). They’re all in the May top 10 too.
Again, though, all of those coaches are employed by college football royalty. (Granted, Swinney gets bonus points for helping Clemson turn into college football royalty, but still.) Isn’t it more impressive to win 11 regular-season games at Indiana, as Curt Cignetti did in 2024, than to go 10-4 like Swinney did? Isn’t it probably harder to finish 12th in SP+ at SMU, as Rhett Lashlee did in 2024, than to finish fifth like Franklin did?
I’ve begun to incorporate teams’ performance against long-term averages into my preseason SP+ projections, and it seems we could use a very similar concept to evaluate coach performances. For each year someone is a head coach, we could compare his team’s SP+ rating for that season to the school’s average from the 20 previous years. (If the school is newer to FBS and doesn’t have a 20-year average, we can use whatever average exists to date. And for a program’s first FBS season, we can simply compare the team’s SP+ rating to the overall average for first-year programs.)
By this method, the 10 best single-season coaching performances of the past 20 years include Art Briles at Baylor in 2013-14, Jim Harbaugh at Stanford in 2010, Mark Mangino at Kansas in 2007, Bobby Petrino at Louisville in 2006, Greg Schiano at Rutgers in 2006 and Jamey Chadwell at Coastal Carolina in 2020 — legendary seasons of overachievement — plus perhaps lesser-remembered performances such as Gary Andersen at Utah State in 2012, Matt Wells at Utah State in 2018 and Brian Kelly at Cincinnati in 2007.
As far as single-season overachievement goes, that’s a pretty good list. And if we look at a longer-term sample — coaches who have led FBS programs for at least nine of the past 20 years — here are the 15 best performance versus baseline averages.
(Note: I’m looking only at performances within the past 20 years, so Nick Saban’s work at LSU (2000-04) or Michigan State (1995-99), for instance, isn’t included. I also went with nine years instead of 10 so Smart’s current nine-year run at Georgia could be included in the sample.)
Best performance vs. historic baseline averages for the past 20 years (min. nine seasons):
1. Chris Petersen, Boise State (2006-13) and Washington (2014-19): +12.8 points above historic baseline
2. Art Briles, Houston (2005-07) and Baylor (2008-15): +12.8
3. Gary Pinkel, Missouri (2005-15): +12.5
4. Nick Saban, Alabama (2007-23): +10.7
5. Jeff Monken, Army (2014-24): +10.3
6. Willie Fritz, Georgia Southern (2014-15), Tulane (2016-23) and Houston (2024): +10.0
7. Lance Leipold, Buffalo (2015-20) and Kansas (2021-24): +9.5
8. Bobby Petrino, Louisville (2005-06), Arkansas (2008-11), Western Kentucky (2013) and Louisville (2014-18): +9.5
9. Gary Patterson, TCU (2005-21): +8.6
10. Jim Harbaugh, Stanford (2007-10) and Michigan (2015-23): +8.5
11. Blake Anderson, Arkansas State (2014-20) and Utah State (2021-23): +8.5
12. Steve Spurrier, South Carolina (2005-15): +8.2
13. Greg Schiano, Rutgers (2005-11 and 2020-24): +7.8
14. Jeff Brohm, Western Kentucky (2014-16), Purdue (2017-22) and Louisville (2023-24): +7.7
15. David Cutcliffe, Duke (2008-21): +7.7
If we are looking for pure overachievement and aren’t in the mood to reward coaches for winning at schools that always win, this is again a pretty good list. Petersen was spectacular at both Boise State and Washington, while Briles, Pinkel, Monken and Patterson all won big at schools that hadn’t won big in quite a while. (Monken, in fact, is still winning big.) Blake Anderson’s presence surprised me, but most of the names here are extremely well regarded. And Saban’s presence at No. 4, despite coaching at one of the bluest of blue-blood programs, is a pretty good indicator of just how special his reign at Alabama was.
Still, looking only at performance against expectations obviously sells coaches like Saban and Smart short. Saban is probably the best head coach in the sport’s history but ranks only fourth on the above list. Meanwhile, Smart has overachieved by only 6.0 points above the historic baseline in his nine seasons at Georgia thanks to the high bar predecessor Mark Richt set. But he has also won two national titles, overcoming Georgia’s history of falling just short and at least briefly surpassing Saban as well. If our goal is to measure coaching prowess, we need to account for raw quality too.
The best coaches of the past 20 years
If we combine raw SP+ averages with this performance versus baseline average, we can come up with a pretty decent overall coach rating. We can debate the weights involved, but here’s what an overall rating looks like if we use 60% performance versus baseline and 40% SP+ average:
I always like to say that numbers make great starting points for a conversation, and this is a pretty good starting point. Anyone reading this would probably tweak this list to suit their own preferences, and while it probably isn’t surprising that Pinkel is in the top 20, seeing him fourth, ahead of Meyer, Harbaugh and others, is a bit jarring. (I promise that this Mizzou alum didn’t put his finger on the scales.) Regardless, this is a fun mix of guys who won big at big schools and guys who won pretty big at pretty big schools. That was the goal of the exercise.
Maybe the most confusing coach in this top 20 is Dabo Swinney. Clemson had enjoyed just one AP top-five finish in its history before he took over 16 years ago, and he has led the Tigers to 2 national titles, 6 top-five finishes and 7 CFP appearances. And while they haven’t had a true, title-caliber team in a few years, they’ve still won two of the past three ACC crowns. How is he only 10th?
The main culprit for Swinney’s lower-than-expected ranking is his recent performance — it has been inferior to both national title standards and his standards. Since we’re using a team’s performance against 20-year averages, a lot of this rating is basically comparing Swinney to himself, and he hasn’t quite measured up of late.
From 2012 to 2020, Swinney’s average rating was an incredible 17.0, which would have ranked second to only Saban on the list above. But his average over the past four seasons is only 3.6.
Part of what made Saban so impressive was how long he managed to clear the bar he himself was setting in Tuscaloosa. Per SP+, his best team was his 14th — the 2020 team that won his sixth and final title at Bama. While Swinney was basically matching Saban’s standard 12 years into their respective tenures, Saban continued at a particularly high level for at least three more years while Swinney fell off the pace.
Comparing Saban, Swinney and Smart year by year, we see that Smart was hitting Saban-esque levels seven seasons into his tenure, but his rating has fallen off each of the past two seasons. Even Saban slipped starting in Year 15, even though he still had nearly the best program in the sport for a couple more years.
The best coaches of 2025
Six of the top seven coaches on the list above are either retired or coaching in the NFL now, so let’s focus our gaze specifically on the guys who will be leading college teams out onto the field in 2025. Using the same 20-year sample as above — which cuts off the tenure of Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz but includes everything else — here’s how the current crop of FBS head coaches has performed at the FBS level. We’ll break this into two samples: the guys who have coached for at least four years in this sample and the guys who have coached between one and three years.
Our May top 10 list featured eight guys who have been head coaches for at least four years; all eight are represented on this list, including four of the top five. (Sarkisian has averaged a 13.8 rating over the past two seasons, which is a top-five level, but his overall run as head coach at Washington, USC and Texas has featured a number of ups and downs.)
Maybe the name that jumps out the most above is Josh Heupel. I think anyone would consider him a very good coach (he’s 37-15 overall), but he doesn’t exactly draw any “best in the game?” hype. He benefited from a positive situation at UCF, where he inherited a rising program from Scott Frost in 2019 and produced big ratings in his first couple of years on the job. But his average rating at Tennessee has been a solid 14.0 as well; the Volunteers had been up and down for years, but he has produced four top-20 SP+ ratings in a row and two top-10s in the past three years. He might not be getting the credit he deserves for that.
All in all, I enjoy this list. We’ve got mostly predictable names at the top, we’ve got some oldies but (mostly) goodies spread throughout, and we’ve got room for up-and-comers like Jeff Traylor too. This 60-40 approach probably doesn’t give enough respect to the Chris Creightons of the world — the Eastern Michigan coach has overachieved against EMU’s baseline by 7.2 points per season, which is a fantastic average, but at such a hard job, his Eagles have still averaged only a minus-14.4 SP+ rating during his tenure. Still, this is a mostly solid approach.
Now let’s talk about some small-sample all-stars.
Four of the top six of this list coached in the College Football Playoff last season, and while the guys ranked fifth and sixth made our May top 10 list, the guys who won big at SMU and Indiana, not Oregon and Notre Dame, take priority here. I was honestly floored that Curt Cignetti didn’t make our top 10 list; he led James Madison to one of the best FBS debuts ever, going 19-4 in 2022-23, then he moved to Bloomington and led Indiana — INDIANA! — to 11 wins in his first season there.
On this list, however, Rhett Lashlee tops even Cignetti. I’m not sure we’ve talked enough about the job he has done at SMU. He, too, inherited a rising program, as Sonny Dykes had done some of the nitty-gritty work in getting the Mustangs back on their feet (with help from an offensive coordinator named Rhett Lashlee). SMU hadn’t produced a top-50 ranking since 1985 before Dykes did so for three straight seasons (2019-21). But after holding steady in his first year replacing Dykes, Lashlee’s program has ignited: 12-2 and 24th in SP+ in 2023, then 11-3 and 12th in 2024. Looking specifically at the 2021-24 range, as the game has undergone so much change, Lashlee’s 16.8 average rating ranks second overall, behind only Smart (18.0) and ahead of Kiffin (15.1), Cignetti (15.0), Odom (15.0), Heupel (14.0) and Day (13.9).
Along with quite a few others here, Lashlee made my 2024 list of 30 coaches who would define the next decade; he’d definitely still be on the list — along with new additions like GJ Kinne and perhaps Fran Brown — if I remade that list today.
It’s 2025 MLB All-Star Home Run Derby day in Atlanta!
Some of the most dynamic home run hitters in baseball will be taking aim at the Truist Park stands on Monday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) in one of the most anticipated events of the summer.
While the prospect of a back-to-back champion is out of the picture — 2024 winner Teoscar Hernandez is not a part of this year’s field — a number of exciting stars will be taking the field, including Atlanta’s own Matt Olson, who replaced Ronald Acuna Jr. just three days before the event. Will Olson make a run in front of his home crowd? Will Cal Raleigh show off the power that led to 38 home runs in the first half? Or will one of the younger participants take the title?
We have your one-stop shop for everything Derby related, from predictions to live updates once we get underway to analysis and takeaways at the night’s end.
MLB Home Run Derby field
Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners (38 home runs in 2025)
James Wood, Washington Nationals (24)
Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay Rays (23)
Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins (21)
Brent Rooker, Athletics (20)
Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves (17)
Jazz Chisholm Jr., New York Yankees (17)
Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates (16)
Live updates
Who is going to win the Derby and who will be the runner-up?
Jeff Passan: Raleigh. His swing is perfect for the Derby: He leads MLB this season in both pull percentage and fly ball percentage, so it’s not as if he needs to recalibrate it to succeed. He has also become a prolific hitter from the right side this season — 16 home runs in 102 at-bats — and his ability to switch between right- and left-handed pitching offers a potential advantage. No switch-hitter (or catcher for that matter) has won a Home Run Derby. The Big Dumper is primed to be the first, beating Buxton in the finals.
Alden Gonzalez: Cruz. He might be wildly inconsistent at this point in his career, but he is perfect for the Derby — young enough to possess the stamina required for a taxing event that could become exhausting in the Atlanta heat; left-handed, in a ballpark where the ball carries out better to right field; and, most importantly, capable of hitting balls at incomprehensible velocities. Raleigh will put on a good show from both sides of the plate but will come in second.
Buster Olney: Olson. He is effectively pinch-hitting for Acuna, and because he received word in the past 72 hours of his participation, he hasn’t had the practice rounds that the other competitors have been going through. But he’s the only person in this group who has done the Derby before, which means he has experienced the accelerated pace, adrenaline and push of the crowd.
His pitcher, Eddie Perez, knows something about performing in a full stadium in Atlanta. And, as Olson acknowledged in a conversation Sunday, the park generally favors left-handed hitters because of the larger distances that right-handed hitters must cover in left field.
Jesse Rogers: Olson. Home-field advantage will mean something this year as hitting in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will be an extra challenge in Atlanta. Olson understands that and can pace himself accordingly. Plus, he was a late addition. He has got nothing to lose. He’ll outlast the young bucks in the field. And I’m not putting Raleigh any lower than second — his first half screams that he’ll be in the finals against Olson.
Jorge Castillo: Wood. His mammoth power isn’t disputed — he can jack baseballs to all fields. But the slight defect in his power package is that he doesn’t hit the ball in the air nearly as often as a typical slugger. Wood ranks 126th out of 155 qualified hitters across the majors in fly ball percentage. And he still has swatted 24 home runs this season. So, in an event where he’s going to do everything he can to lift baseballs, hitting fly balls won’t be an issue, and Wood is going to show off that gigantic power en route to a victory over Cruz in the finals.
Who will hit the longest home run of the night — and how far?
Passan: Cruz hits the ball harder than anyone in baseball history. He’s the choice here, at 493 feet.
Gonzalez: If you exclude the Coors Field version, there have been just six Statcast-era Derby home runs that have traveled 497-plus feet. They were compiled by two men: Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. James Wood — all 6-foot-7, 234 pounds of him — will become the third.
Olney: James Wood has the easy Stanton- and Judge-type power, and he will clear the Chophouse with the longest homer. Let’s say 497 feet.
Rogers: Hopefully he doesn’t injure himself doing it, but Buxton will break out his massive strength and crush a ball at least 505 feet. I don’t see him advancing far in the event, but for one swing, he’ll own the night.
Castillo: Cruz hits baseballs hard and far. He’ll crush a few bombs, and one will reach an even 500 feet.
Who is the one slugger fans will know much better after the Derby?
Passan: Buxton capped his first half with a cycle on Saturday, and he’ll carry that into the Derby, where he will remind the world why he was baseball’s No. 1 prospect in 2015. Buxton’s talent has never been in question, just his health. And with his body feeling right, he has the opportunity to put on a show fans won’t soon forget.
Olney: Caminero isn’t a big name and wasn’t a high-end prospect like Wood was earlier in his career. Just 3½ years ago, Caminero was dealt to the Rays by the Cleveland Guardians in a relatively minor November trade for pitcher Tobias Myers. But since then, he has refined his ability to cover inside pitches and is blossoming this year into a player with ridiculous power. He won’t win the Derby, but he’ll open some eyes.
What’s the one moment we’ll all be talking about long after this Derby ends?
Gonzalez: The incredible distances and velocities that will be reached, particularly by Wood, Cruz, Caminero, Raleigh and Buxton. The hot, humid weather at Truist Park will only aid the mind-blowing power that will be on display Monday night.
Rogers: The exhaustion on the hitter’s faces, swinging for home run after home run in the heat and humidity of Hot-lanta!
Castillo: Cruz’s 500-foot blast and a bunch of other lasers he hits in the first two rounds before running out of gas in the finals.
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