By John Franco
The Pirates need power. They’ve called up Pedro Alvarez. They’ve kicked the tires on everyone from Carlos Beltran to Jason Giambi. For all we know they’ve kicked the tires on Jeremy Giambi. But are they going to get what they’re looking for?
Using a tool developed by the fine folks over at katron.org, you can plug in any player and project where their hits would have landed in another ballpark. For example, if you projected all of the home runs hit at Yankee Stadium this season into Citi Field, you can see that the little notch in right-center field would cost the Yankees quite a few trips around the bases:
This tool doesn’t account for height or trajectory, so the statistical analysis will not be perfect, especially with PNC Park’s Clemente Wall in right field, but it is close enough to provide a solid estimate. Let’s review a few players the Pirates are rumored to be scouting and how they have performed in their home ballparks this season – assuming they’ll still hit about the same on the road as they did before their fictitious arrival in Pittsburgh.
For more accurate information, you can review the data on the ESPN Home Run Tracker - link goes to Carlos Pena‘s data in 2011 - but that won’t give you the handy ballpark projection so you’ll have to do the calculations yourself. Consider this more of a napkin sketch than an easel drawing.
Carlos Pena: As a power-hitting lefty, Pena seems like he would be a great match for PNC Park, but he has hit 9 home runs at Wrigley Field this year, and only 5 of them would have cleared the walls at PNC.
Hunter Pence: As a slugging righty, Pence would be more worrisome, since he would be moving from a short porch in Houston (the Crawford Boxes) to a deep left field in Pittsburgh (one that drove Jason Bay nuts at times). For 2011, I’m not even going to bother posting the picture for Pence – he has 4 home runs at Minute Maid this year and they would all be deep in the seats at PNC Park. Instead, I’ll share Pence’s snapshot from last year, when he would have lost half of his 14 Juice Box homers.
Josh Willingham: Sweet merciful crap. I really hope someone in the Pirate organization already knows this, or that someone forwards this blog post to Neal Huntington. Not one of his Oakland home runs would have left the yard in PNC Park.
Carlos Beltran: He might not be willing to come to the Pirates. The Pirates might not be willing to pay the price to get him. But let’s take a look anyway. It doesn’t look great – as a lefty, he’d provide plenty of souvenirs, but overall, only 4 of his 9 home runs would have left the yard at PNC.
Jason Giambi: While I’m not sure he’s up to the challenge of playing first base every day, or chasing down errant throws from Ronny Cedeno and Pedro Alvarez, there’s little doubt about Giambi’s power. All 7 of his Coors Field home runs for 2010-2011 would have cleared the fences comfortably at PNC Park. [ESPN rates 5 of his 10 home runs this year as "no doubters" - compared to a league average of 18%. When Giambi hits them, they stay hit.]
David Dejesus: Dejesus has three home runs in Oakland this year and one of them might have cleared the wall at PNC. I don’t think the Pirates really need him anyway, but they certainly wouldn’t be acquiring him for his power.
Chris Iannetta: This one’s for Paul. Iannetta is a dead pull hitter and would not have to fear the North Side Notch – 5 of his 6 Coors Field home runs would have cleared the fence at PNC Park:
If the Pirates are looking for power, they need to keep their home park in mind. They already have plenty of players who don’t hit the ball out of the park – they don’t need to trade for another one.
One catch witch Giambi…..Coors Field is in Denver. When you take altitude into account, Giambi would probably suffer from PNC being a pitcher’s park as much as anyone else.
In looking at this I immediately wonder if there’s any accounting for park factor in the players original home run total. For example; since Chris Ianetta is slugging .562 at Coors and .248 everywhere else it appears his power is product of Coors and few if any of those home runs are hit anywhere but Coors where as Giambi hits as well on the road as he at home.
Thanks David. I did check the true HR distance on Giambi a little more closely because of the Coors factor. I am assuming that ESPN takes that into account when they call it “standard distance” – they even have an adjustment for the altitude. Giambi loses 31 feet on one of his HRs – that one would have only been out of 2/30 stadiums, and Coors was one of them. But 6 of his 10 HRs would have been out of 30 parks, and 2 others are at 29 and 26.
Here’s a link to Giambi’s full profile: http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2011_2520&type=hitter
Hey John, I was looking around at some of the other sweet spot blogs and was wondering if you guys were planning on adding onto the site at all? Most of the other sites have lots of useful links on the side bars or roster information. Just wondering when or if at all the site was going to get a tune up?
Paul,
Thanks for your comments. I am assuming that Iannetta will continue to slug something like his current .258 on the road. Whatever normalization or adjustments might happen to his road batting line would presumably happen whether he was a Pirate or a Rockie, so I’m excluding that information. [He has a .195 BABIP on the road in 2011, and a career road BABIP of .249, so some improvement is likely]
But taking him out of Coors makes him a guy with a .258 SLG on the road and something less than a .562 SLG at PNC Park, because PNC will take away some home runs. If you check his park maps from 2010, he actually GAINS one home run moving to PNC, because all of his homers still clear the wall and so does one fly ball. But, as mentioned in the Giambi comment, the HR maps don’t account for the altitude factor, so Iannetta might actually lose some homers in the end.
For the love of God, keep wrintig these articles.
I have been saying for years that PNC is one of those places where homeruns go to die. Left field is ENORMOUS and right field to right-center (320-375) isn’t a short porch by any means (of course there’s 21 feet of wall to contend with).
The Pirates need gap-to-gap hitters who don’t strikeout a lot. Billy Butler (KC) and Adam Lind (TOR) are examples. Neither K’s a lot and both are doubles machines.
Robert – good points. There are basically 3 kinds of hitters who can hit homers in PNC Park
Dead pull righties – look at Iannetta’s HR chart. If you can yank it right down the line in left, the first 30 feet or so are pretty forgiving.
Lefties with loft – if you’re a lefty line-drive hitter you’re going to smoke some rockets off of the Clemente Wall. But if you’ve got some loft, you’ll get some pop-ups over that wall. Think of a guy like Daryle Ward when he was here – not that he didn’t hit some bombs as well.
No doubters – a guy like Giambi or Thome who hits everything 450 feet when they hit it deep.
If you can’t find one of those guys, then yeah, get some gap hitters and run the bases.
All three (homerun hitters) assessments are correct. People like to point to Brian Giles, Reggie Sanders, Aramis Ramirez, and Jason Bay as proof that guys can hit bombs there.
Sanders and Ramirez are dead pull guys.
Giles is a lefty “with loft” as you correctly put it.
And Jason Bay hit a fairly large portion of his HR’s at PNC to the deck (that’s what I like to call it) in right center just left of the Clemente Wall because he was a loft guy with some oppo. power.
This is a great idea but it’s such a small sample size that ultimately it doesn’t inform very much. If you ran career or even 3 year hrs instead of just this half seasons it would be far more useful. Great concept though
Huh? According to the ESPN homerun tracker, it looks like 8 of Willingham’s HR’s were over 400 ft. It looks like the vast majority of them would have been out at PNC. I don’t know where you got your info, but you got it wrong, sorry.
http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2011_39&type=hitter
Michael,
I’m not sure why the Katron data looks so different from Willingham. I’ve looked at it 3 times and that’s what they’re showing (all the hits inside PNC) but I agree with you that the ESPN tracker looks different. I’m only looking at homers hit at home, but of Willingham’s 7, ESPN has 5 of them going out of all 30 parks. So maybe he wouldn’t be such a bad fit after all, especially if the price was cheap enough. I’ve actually always liked him as a hitter.
I would like to see what hitters like Albert P. and Holliday do. The last homestand for the Pirates didn’t have any problem hitting them out!
GREAT REVIEW! I agree with pretty much all you said in your article, especially at the middle of your article. Thank you, your post is very useful as always. Keep up the good work! You’ve got +1 more reader of your web blog:) Isabella S.
Fine details! I have been previously looking for something such as this for quite a while now. Cheers!
Hi John, I’m the creator of the tool. The number one thing to keep in mind when using it is that atmospheric data is ignored. ESPN/HRT does a much better job about this, but he only tracks home runs while I have all contacted balls. I would like to include additional data, but until HitF/X data is released, this is the best I can do.
Sean – thanks for weighing in. I love your tool and think it’s a great addition to the saber community. I understand what you’re saying about the atmospheric data possibly skewing things. I just like the pictures – it’s a quick way to get a read on things before diving into the ESPN data.
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