Gone Again: Is Yankee Stadium III A Muthaflurk'n Joke?

Last night I flipped on the World Wide Leader to catch a few minutes of the Yankees/Rays game. The score at the time was 3-3 with the Yankees batting and Johnny Damon at the plate. Damon has hit over 20 homers once in his 15 year major league career, so he's hardly a home run hitter. Rays pitcher Andy Sonnanstine threw and Damon swung. It was a pop up to right field. Damon disgustedly threw his bat down and sprinted to first. The ball flew over the right field wall and ended up four rows deep in the stands. Home run. The one trick pony that is Chris Berman was forced to do his "Backbackback! Gone!" routine, and flick went the television set. God damn, Berman is obnoxious.

We've all heard what a homer haven the new Yankee Stadium is through the mainstream media. Supposedly the ball carries out to right field like crazy. Last night the Yankees hit four home runs, and sure enough, all four homers were to right field. But watching Damon's reaction after hitting the ball, seeing how he hit the ball (not particularly well), and seeing where the ball ended up all got me thinking. Have the Yankees built themselves (accidentally or on purpose) a homer crazy park?

The Yankees have hit 92 homers on the season, the most in either league. The next closest team is Texas, with 89, then Philadelphia with 78, so the Yankees are hitting lots of homers. Some of this can be explained by the fact that the Yankees have good hitters, so they're going to hit more homers. But that's an overly simple explanation. Last year the Yankees hit 180 homers and they had good hitters then too. This year they're on pace to hit 275 homers, a 50% increase for a team that, other than adding Mark Teixeira (a not insignificant addition, I grant you) is getting older, not better.

But where are they hitting them? So far they've played 29 games at home and 28 on the road, so a pretty even split. On the road they've hit 35 homers. At home, they've hit 57. So, something is different this season.

I wanted to see if the conventional wisdom that its super easy to homer to right field jived with the numbers, but couldn't find where to break down those 57 homers by direction. I was able to find a break down of all 92 homers the team has hit this year though. Fourteen (15%) have been hit over the left field wall, 27 (29%) to center, and 51 (55%) have gone over the right field wall. Seems like something is going on.

There are a couple rational explanations that could explain this massive discrepancy in homers, and more specifically, homers to right field. Do the Yankees have a particularly left handed lineup that would lend itself to more homers to right field? The Yankee lineup features three right handed hitters, two left handers, and four switch hitters. Against a right handed pitcher (and most pitchers are right handed), the Yankees would feature six left handed hitters to only three righties. That's a pretty huge split, and when you consider that Derek Jeter, one of the right handed hitters, frequently goes the other way with the ball (in his case that would mean hitting the ball to right field), the Yankees probably hit an abnormally large number of balls to right field.

That may account for the directional difference, but it doesn't account for the increase in total homers. One explanation could be that the Yankees have collected a group of players who are hitting their peak productive years, i.e. the group should be hitting more homers than they did last season. Research has showed us that, roughly speaking, offensive production peaks between the ages of 27 and 29. Before that skills are improving, and beyond that skills generally decline.

To see, I divided the Yankees lineup into three admittedly rough categories: Improving, Peak, and Declining. Befitting a team that wants to win now, only one player fell into the "improving" category: Melky Cabrera. The rest of the lineup features five players "Declining" and three at "Peak." All three "Peak" players were lefties or switch hitters. This could help account for the increase in homers.

Next, I projected each regular's homer totals from this season over 162 games to see which players project to have a career high in homers this season. Four players do, which seems pretty high to me. Here they are (Current Career High/Projected 2009 Total/Difference):

1. Melky Cabrera (8/17/+9)
2. Robinson Cano (19/26/+7)
3. Mark Teixeira (43/51/+8)
4. Johnny Damon (24/34/+10)

Cabrera is 25 years old, Cano 27, Teixeira 29, and Damon is 36. The first three are "improving" or at "peak", so none of their performances are really out of the ordinary as these players should be having their best seasons now. Damon's performance definitely is an outlier, as players very rarely increase their power output at his age.

The one other player who stands out from the projections is Derek Jeter. Like Damon, Jeter is also 36. Unlike Damon, who's home runs have been improving recently, Jeter's have been in decline since 2004, yet, after hitting 23 total homers over the past two seasons combined, he is on pace to hit that same number this year, only one below his career high. Both these players hit homers to right field, so that could be part of the homer jump.

If the Yankees are hitting many more homers at home then on the road, it would stand to reason that they'd be giving them up too. This season, Yankee pitching has given up 77 homers. That isn't the most in baseball, Philadelphia has given up 81, but it is tied for the most in the American League with Minnesota and Baltimore, and 62% (48) of the 77 have been given up at home. Only 36% (28) have come on the road. Recall the Yankees have played only one more game at home than on the road, so this is a big difference. Considering the general quality of the Yankee pitching staff - probably not great, but definitely above average - one would have to conclude that hitting homers in Yankee Stadium has been easier to do than elsewhere up to this point in time.

Again, I wasn't able to break the homers down by home/road and by direction, so I had to use the total given up this season to see the directional breakdown. Of the homers given up by Yankee pitching in '09, 28 or 36% went to left field, 26 (34%) to center, and only 23 or 30% to right field. It seems that Yankee pitchers aren't having the same problems with right field in Yankee Stadium that opposing pitchers are.

Another possible explanation for all this is a massive increase in total homers throughout baseball this season. If it exists it could at least partly explain away the Yankee Stadium homer totals. So, I looked it up and, well, nope. The number of homers hit throughout baseball this season is almost exactly on pace with the number of homers hit last season. Last season 4,878 homers were hit. This season, the leagues are on pace to hit 4,891, or 0.0027% more.

So, it seems I've hit a dead end. With the limited information presented above, all I can say is the reason there are more homers being hit in Yankee Stadium this season might be due to a couple career years by improving players and/or an excellent power hitting lineup that predominantly hits left handed. Or it could be because the Yankees have built themselves a $1.2 Billion bandbox of a ballpark. One way or the other, it isn't due to a league-wide homer barrage, and it likely doesn't have anything to do with with a jet stream from home plate to the right field bleachers or an extra short right field porch. It seems that any trouble that pitchers are having giving up homers to right field is due to the handed-ness of Yankee batters.

Sample size plays a roll in this too, because one third of a season simply isn't enough information to come to a solid conclusion about a new ballpark. We'll know more as time goes on. Still, I can't shake the image of Damon frustratedly tossing his bat aside and sprinting to first, certain he just popped out, while the ball carries over the right field wall. It will be interesting to see what the numbers are like at the end of the year.
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