Causal Sports Fan: Williams: New York is Lefty Land

Troster moves? More washed-up left-handed bats!

It’s no coincidence that both homers went to right field off of left-handed bats. Here are the home/road home run splits for the Yankees lefties in 2012:

  •Cano: 22/11
  •Granderson: 26/17
  •Swisher (as a lefty): 7/12
  •Teixeira (as a lefty): 7/7
  •Ibanez: 14/5
  •Chavez: 7/9
  •Suzuki: 5/0
  •Dewayne Wise: 2/1
  •Chris Dickerson: 1/1

That’s good for a 91/63 split combined. Facing a righty, the Yankees’ lineup could feature as many as seven left-handed bats. That’s not normal — it’s almost surely intentional. The Yankees are built to fit their park. Indeed, they had the best home record in baseball in 2012 at 51-30 (though six teams trailed at 50-31).

What makes it interesting is that there’s no reason this should hurt the Yankees on the road particularly, meaning that the Yankees have a real advantage that isn’t available to most other teams and isn’t balanced out when they travel (though losing Jeter, their best right-handed bat, may have had a bigger effect than one would expect since he’s relatively more valuable on the road). The Tigers, for example, have good defensive outfielders this year (once Quintin Berry and Andy Dirks got regular playing time) to fit their big park, but they give up some power in the outfield with that personnel. Indeed, the Tigers had a 50-31 record at home but a bad road record of 38-43. If they played in Fenway, Cabrera would probably do his Manny impression in left field, opening up another power position at third base, but hurting them on the road in bigger parks.

There are surely other teams with similar advantages, but the Yankees seem most obvious. For example, check out some ESPN Home Run Tracker pictures for Yankees hitters with Comerica Park overlaid (Granderson, Cano, Yankee Stadium as a whole).