After zooming around on the interwebbings while nursing my hangover, I noticed that everyone was playing with this fun new tool, and so I had to just join in. Katron.org has created a tool that allows you to show a player’s hits from one park on top of the map of another park.
Of course, I just HAD to see what Jason Bay would have done in Citi Field last year. The results were disastrous.
Jason Bay in Fenway:
Jason Bay’s Fenway home runs mapped onto Citi Field:
That’s right. Jason Bay would have hit two home runs in Citi Field last year according to this tool… Let’s hope that Fenway is so strange that it screws up mapping tools like this, because it’s hard to tell if the Fenway home runs are plotted at their ‘true’ distance, or where they would have actually landed if there were no stands. It’s hard to swallow that Bay is a Fenway product given the fact that he’s performed well in many different stadiums. Looking at his numbers, he’s had a steady .225+ ISO everywhere he’s been, and his power didn’t spike too much in Boston. Perhaps the strongest thing we can take from these pictures is that it might be safer to side with the more pessimistic power projections (27 home runs from Marcel).
Oh, and because we were talking about David Wright‘s power problems, here’s a map of his doubles, triples and home runs in Citi Field last year – mapped on Shea. It seems to show that last year was just a strange year for Wright, and that Citi only ‘stole’ 2-3 home runs from him.
If you are a fantasy player and are wondering how Target will play, katron.org also has a three-part series on that stadium, with conclusions that contradict most early reports that the new Twins’ home park will play like a hitters’ park.
