Yankee Stadium effect on Aaron Judge home run chase

Aaron Judge has 60 home runs, a number that is part milestone (he’s just one away from tying the American League record, if you haven’t heard) and part legend (while 60 isn’t the single-season MLB record or even close to it, it’s a number that’s been burned into the hearts of baseball fans for generations). It’s a pretty big deal. Obviously.

He also plays in Yankee Stadium, a park with a well-known short porch in right, which makes it easier than anywhere else to get “cheapie” home runs, and you know where this is going. Aaron Judge is breaking home run marks? Must be the ballpark.

Allow us to disabuse you of this notion, for it is not true. What Judge is doing has quite little to do with Yankee Stadium.

1) Start here: Judge is slugging better on the road

We have all sorts of fancy numbers and pictures to get into. Let’s start with the absolute simplest one. While it’s true that Judge has slugged better at home than on the road over his career, that’s not the case in 2022 – or, you know, the season in which he’s hit 60 home runs. He’s split his home runs evenly, but overall, he’s hit far better away from the Bronx.

Home
.312/.412/.677 – 1.089 OPS – 30 HR

Road
.317/.433/.713 – 1.147 OPS – 30 HR

Judge might have baseball’s best slugging percentage at home, but he’s also got baseball’s best slugging percentage on the road – by 113 points. Which, of course, undersells it. That .713 slugging is tied for the 8th-best season in the Wild Card era (min. 250 road plate appearances). It’s the best Yankees road slugging season since before World War II.

Or, maybe this is the best way to say it. Judge’s road home runs, all 30 of them, by themselves, without a single blast in home pinstripes … would be in the top 20 overall home run seasons this year. It’s as many as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Same for NL MVP candidate Nolan Arenado. It’s only half of Judge’s season.

2) Yankee Stadium isn’t the home run haven you think it is

Despite the park’s reputation, if you were to head on over to the Statcast park factors, you’d find something interesting: Yankee Stadium is one of a number of parks tied between 12th and 17th. It’s an average hitter’s park.

The reason for that is because it’s extremely difficult to get non-home run extra-base hits there; over the last three years, only one park has seen fewer doubles and triples, and this year, only four have. If that’s in part because some of those deep fly balls end up over the wall, that’s reflected in the numbers too; Yankee Stadium, for right-handed batters, has a 111 home run factor over the last three years, where 100 is average. That’s a good place to hit a homer, but it’s hardly an outlier. It’s tied for 8th-best. It’s even lower just in 2022, a mere 15th.

Now: Let’s not pretend that the short porch doesn’t matter, because it certainly does. Yankee Stadium, this year, has seen 15 home runs that would not have been out of any other park, easily the most in baseball. (Minute Maid Park [9], Wrigley Field [5], and Dodger Stadium [5] are the only other parks with at least five.) That’s true over any time period you like; if you go…