Boston’s Most Wanted

What I'd like to investigate here is how parks affect specific batters. I should say "start to investigate," because I'm only going to look for hitters that might be expected to hit well in Fenway Park, owing to the presence of the Green Monster. In a previous article, I used hit location data from 2005 to examine which Red Sox hitters most benefited from the Monster that year. This time, after adding batted-ball location data from 2006, I want to look at players from other teams who might get a large boost from the Monster.

J.D. versus Julio

So what I'm going to do is take each batter with a reasonable number of plate appearances away from Fenway Park and look at his fly balls (and line drives) to left field. For each ball, I'm going to determine if that ball, had it been hit in Fenway, would likely have hit the wall or gone over it. Such balls are usually doubles or home runs in Fenway, but are often outs in other ballparks. (I exclude balls that go way over the wall, balls that would have been homers in any park.)

As I mentioned in the previous article, the location data that I have specifies the position where the ball was fielded, rather than where it landed. So the recorded location of a double in the left-center field gap will be not where the liner struck the playing surface, but rather where it was picked up after bounding out to the base of the outfield wall. Clearly, it's not possible to know if such a ball would have hit the Green Monster. So, I confine myself to using home runs and fly ball outs, since the location data for these batted balls correspond to where they would have hit the ground, and hence allow me to estimate if they would have hit the Monster.

As examples, let's have a look at the hit charts for a couple of players, J.D. Drew and Julio Lugo, whom the Red Sox acquired this offseason.

You can see that Drew hit many more balls into the "Monster Zone" than Lugo did, and he did it with fewer plate appearances since he was injured for much of 2005. So, did the Red Sox take this into account when pursuing Drew and Lugo? More on that in a minute.

Please Come to Boston

So, which players would be in the best position to take advantage of the Green Monster, should they come to play full time in Boston? What follows is a list of the 10 batters who hit the most balls into the Monster Zone per plate appearance:

+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
| Name               | N  | outs | HR   | HR/out | pa   | N/600pa |
+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
| Jones, Chipper     | 20 |   14 |    6 |   0.43 |  595 |    20.2 |
| Edmonds, Jim       | 19 |   12 |    7 |   0.58 |  574 |    19.9 |
| Lane, Jason        | 19 |    6 |   13 |   2.17 |  612 |    18.6 |
| Soriano, Alfonso   | 29 |   27 |    2 |   0.07 |  934 |    18.6 |
| Berkman, Lance     | 24 |    5 |   19 |   3.80 |  793 |    18.2 |
| Biggio, Craig      | 26 |    6 |   20 |   3.33 |  934 |    16.7 |
| Helton, Todd       | 23 |   22 |    1 |   0.05 |  867 |    15.9 |
| Sheffield, Gary    | 14 |   13 |    1 |   0.08 |  585 |    14.4 |
| Ensberg, Morgan    | 16 |    2 |   14 |   7.00 |  682 |    14.1 |
| Pujols, Albert     | 22 |    5 |   17 |   3.40 |  970 |    13.6 |
+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
N = number of balls (home runs or outs) hit into the Monster Zone

This difference is a direct consequence of the large dimensions (in left field) of RFK, Yankee Stadium and Coors Field. That's plainly seen here in this comparison of balls hit into the Monster Zone in Houston and Washington. Remember the blue dots are home runs, while outs are shown in black.

Caveat Emptor

Before you start sending telegrams to Theo Epstein, advising him to revive the Helton talks or to inquire about getting Ensberg from the Astros, let's review the limitations of this study.

First of all, I'm only looking at balls hit near the Green Monster. That is Fenway's most distinctive feature; indeed, it's probably the most distinctive feature of any current major league ballpark, so it makes sense to focus on it. However, Fenway also has a spacious right field, which is known to suppress home runs for left-handed batters.

So, while Edmonds would pick up a few homers (and doubles) on fly balls to left field, he would almost certainly lose some on fly balls to right field. This point is most important for left-handed batters, since the right-field dimensions at Fenway have less impact on right-handed swingers. Of course, this study could be extended to include balls hit to any part of the ballpark.

As an aside, the Red Sox don't seem to be worried about the effects of Fenway on Drew's hits to right field. The following excerpt is from a Boston Globe interview with Theo Epstein on Dec. 6, 2006:

"He really has a great swing for Fenway Park," Epstein said. "When he pulls the ball and elevates the ball, it will certainly reach the bullpen. He's got plus raw power. The big dimensions in right field and even center field won't be a problem for him. If you look at his hit chart, those balls get out."

Getting back to our caveats, the presence of Helton in the list above reminds us that outfield dimensions are only one factor in determining if a given batted ball flies a given distance. If you have ever visited Greg Rybarczyk's excellent Hit Tracker site, you know that altitude, wind speed and direction, and temperature all have an important effect on how far a batted ball will go.

Greg has used his Hit Tracker tool to "transplant" a player from one park to another, most notably he estimated how Josh Beckett's 2006 performance might have looked had he remained a Marlin. (The interesting results of that study appear in Greg's article in the Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2007, check it out.)

Hit Tracker, though, requires, in addition to the landing place of the ball, the amount of time it was in the air. He obtains that data by watching video of home runs, lots of video. I'm much lazier than Greg, so I have to neglect the effects of weather and altitude.

Does Theo Know This Stuff?

About who would be adept at exploiting the Green Monster? Undoubtedly. More from the Epstein interview cited above:

[Drew] also hits the ball in the air to the opposite field quite a bit and certainly has the ability to reach the wall or go over the wall.

Before the 2005 season, the Red Sox acquired Mark Loretta, Coco Crisp, Alex Gonzalez, Mike Lowell and Willy Mo Pena. This year, as already noted, the Sox have signed Drew and Lugo. Here is a table showing the wall-ball stats of these players in 2005-2006 (again, Fenway Park pa's excluded):

+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
| Name               | N  | outs | HR   | HR/out | pa   | N/600pa |
+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
| Drew, J.D.         | 13 |   10 |    3 |   0.30 |  576 |    13.5 |
| Lowell, Mike       | 13 |    9 |    4 |   0.44 |  675 |    11.6 |
| Gonzalez, Alex     |  8 |    6 |    2 |   0.33 |  520 |     9.2 |
| Pena, Wily Mo      |  4 |    2 |    2 |   1.00 |  266 |     9.0 |
| Lugo, Julio        |  4 |    4 |    0 |   0.00 |  828 |     2.9 |
| Loretta, Mark      |  3 |    2 |    1 |   0.50 |  646 |     2.8 |
| Crisp, Coco        |  3 |    3 |    0 |   0.00 |  680 |     2.6 |
+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
MLB average of N/600pa: 5.5

From this table, it looks like we agree with Theo: Drew certainly has the ability to reach the wall. It's interesting to see Alex Gonzalez near the top of this list. It makes you wonder if the Sox brass figured Sea Bass's wall-balls would make up somewhat for his overall lack of hitting ability. If they did, it's not clear it paid off, since Gonzalez only knocked 24 doubles and nine home runs last year. His slugging percentage of .397 was not any better than it had been in previous years.

Mike Lowell, on the other hand, had a bit of a comeback year in 2006, although that might say more about the depths of 2005 than the heights of 2006. Still, Lowell smacked 47 doubles in 2006, a career high, and his .284/.339/.475 line was respectable and almost surely helped out by the Monster.

You can see that Lugo, Loretta and Crisp don't gain anything from the Green Monster. As for Wily Mo, if you have seen him hit, it's clear that he has the potential to tattoo the Monster regularly, although the numbers above constitute too small a sample to confirm that.

"I do not like clam chowder!"

Just for fun, here are the players who would be ill-advised to make New England their home base. These guys would very rarely bang one off the wall.

+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
| Name               | N  | outs | HR   | HR/out | pa   | N/600pa |
+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+
| Pierre, Juan       |  1 |    1 |    0 |   0.00 | 1224 |     0.5 |
| Figgins, Chone     |  1 |    1 |    0 |   0.00 |  986 |     0.6 |
| Vizquel, Omar      |  1 |    1 |    0 |   0.00 | 1037 |     0.6 |
| Castillo, Luis     |  1 |    1 |    0 |   0.00 |  905 |     0.7 |
| Punto, Nick        |  1 |    1 |    0 |   0.00 |  685 |     0.9 |
| Erstad, Darin      |  1 |    1 |    0 |   0.00 |  533 |     1.1 |
| Kendall, Jason     |  2 |    2 |    0 |   0.00 |  970 |     1.2 |
| Walker, Todd       |  2 |    2 |    0 |   0.00 |  739 |     1.6 |
| Lofton, Kenny      |  2 |    2 |    0 |   0.00 |  718 |     1.7 |
| Catalanotto, Frank |  2 |    2 |    0 |   0.00 |  696 |     1.7 |
+--------------------+----+------+------+--------+------+---------+

Final Thoughts

To be honest, I view all this as more of a bit of fun than some kind of serious analysis. The fact is, it's just very difficult to know how a player will fare in a different ballpark. There are many more factors involved than just the outfield dimensions. In their excellent book, Paths to Glory, Mark Armour and Daniel Levitt address this issue:

... Determining how another park might affect a player is highly uncertain. Is the player a pull hitter who can take advantage of the new setting or a spray hitter who may not gain a similar benefit? Maybe most important, however, and almost impossible to model, is the fact that players are intelligent and can adapt to their surroundings. For example, Hall of Famer Mel Ott hit an incredible 323 of this career 511 home runs in his home park, the Polo Grounds in New York. As baseball historian Stew Thornley has pointed out, he learned to take advantage of his environment. In his first four years in New York, Ott hit 30 home runs at home and 31 on the road. It makes sense for ball clubs to try and determine which type of player or playing style best fits their home parks, but this is often surprisingly complicated.

Hey, that's what I was going to say.

References and Resources
If your curious about a particular player, the complete list (at least 500 pa's) is available here.

John Walsh dabbles in baseball analysis in his spare time. He welcomes questions and comments via e-mail.