Justin Upton - Power In Safeco

Q.  Would Upton's power swirl the Safeco Field toilet, suffering a lingering and repulsive decline, before disappearing into the sewer forever?

A.  Picture's worth a thousand words, baby.  In this case the picture being Upton's 2011 home runs, home and road, overlaid onto Safeco Field:

 ................................................

Q.  Sure, but some of those balls might not travel as far in the air if hit here.

A.  Correct, but you're missing the point.

Upton hit 31 home runs last year with an average distance of ... wait for it ... 424 feet.  Average distance!  

The typical major league home run has a speed off the bat of 103 MPH.  Upton's come off the bat at an average 107 MPH.  He's one of the true supafreaks.  It is possible that even he can't hit home runs in Safeco, but if he can't, then no right hand hitter can.  The attempt is, by definition, going to be your best effort.  If Upton can't hit home runs here ::shrug:: then you change the park for him.  End of story.

Adam Dunn, the reductio ad absurdum as it pertains to the big donkeys of the major leagues, has hit 25 homers this season.  He has averaged 412 feet on them, and 106 MPH off the bat.

If you're looking for right hand power that transcends the park, it's Upton or nobody.  Or you tell me who.

.

Q.  Upton's road SLG is .436.

A.  Well, and his "career" SLG home and road is only .477.  His career numbers include his age-19 and age-20 seasons.  You're not going to learn anything by studying him as a teenaged major leaguer.

In 2011, Upton did have much better stats at home, notably with a .350 home BABIP vs .280 road BABIP.  But!  In 2010 his road numbers were better, and in 2009 he slugged .521 on the road compared to .544 at home (an industry-standard home split, for those just joining us).

You've got to decide whether his home/road splits matter, and if so, how much.  It's a two-step process:  (1) NOTICE the numbers, and (2) JUDGE what those numbers mean in this situation.  You don't get to just skip step 2.

.

Q.  So what does Dr. D believe about the home/road splits, and why?

A.  Dr. D believes that Upton is not an Arizona mirage.  In part this is because of the material laid out in the first half of this post.  It's a little bit like you'd told me that the 1995 Ken Griffey Jr. was a Kingdome mirage, that anyplace else he'd be an ordinary player.  

Watch a game sometime.  Upton's a breathtaking talent.  Don't get wrapped around the axle with alphanumberic characters that muddy the water.

.

Q.  A healthy Upton would hit what, in Safeco?

A.  Well, the park cuts everybody's stats down, that's for sure.  But he's looking at a 140 OPS+, and 27 home runs win as many ballgames in a 3-2 Safeco environment as 35 homers win in a 6-5 Arizona environment.

The alternative:  forget all righties, from now on.  (?)  That's not a viable option, so:  Get the best righty you can, and if that doesn't work, change the park.  More than you're already going to.

 

Comments

1

I'll take the con position on Upton.
Career HR split: 60/38 -- (doubles split is 69/66) -- BABIP split is: .359/.316
Career OPS difference is: .924 to .744. That's a 180 point OPS home/road swing. That's in 1300 PAs in both locations. To dismiss Upton as not "significantly" a product of his environment is (IMO), a major reach.
But ... if one wants to dismiss the 2008 rookie 1039 to .562 H/R split ... I'm good with that. Formative years. Maybe he's "solved it".
2011 - his .898 31-HR season that has got to be the prime take on what a healthy, developed, Upton actually is. What happened in 2011?
Home: .333/.411/.622 (1033) -- .355 BABIP - 26 HRs
Road: .246/.328/.439 (.767) -- .284 BABIP - 5- HRs
Take a close look at that HR split. Why was he averaging so much distance on his HRs? Because he was hitting them at a 5:1 ratio home versus road.
So ... you've got a guy who has a HIGHLY park-driven BABIP skew over 1300 PAs, a 43 point boost at home. You've got a guy who for his career hits 50% more HRs at home, but in his peak year, the ratio was over 80%. And you want to bring him to a park known specifically for knocking down BABIP and HR rates?
I'm an NL guy. The park I most pay attention to for inflating stats outside of Coors is Arizona. Those 106 and 107 hitter factors are very, very real.
Understand ... if you double his road line for his 2011 peak season ... and assume that he hits in Safeco as he did in the aggregate "average" road parks in 2011, he becomes a 10-HR, .750 hitter. Basically, you're looking at Casper Wells, (well, probably not as much power as Wells ... but certainly more SBs).

2
ghost's picture

...the average ball will go 7% further at Phoenix's elevation than at Sea Level...and perhaps 12% further than Safeco's dead air off the water.
what's 400 * .88 again? Ah...

3
Taro's picture

Home/Road splits can be extremely misleading. Guys like Alfonso Soriano and Adrian Gonzalez were guys that had even more extreme home/road splits. Soriano ran OPSs under 700 away from Arlington over SEVERAL years and Gonzalez was a monster away from Petco.
Everybody looked too much into those stats. Soriano was a guy with power to leave any park, when he was traded he had a career high 46 HRs in a pitcher's park. Gonzalez is actually an extreme oppo hitter and not affected as much by Petco as a normal LH hitter. His power since moving to Fenway has imploded.
Its better not to get too carried away with home/road stats, and look at the how the skillset is likely to translate. If Upton were averaging 385 ft HRs and hitting hanging doubles you wouldn't be targetting him.

4
ghost's picture

...taro...look at the trajectories for Upton...he's a flyball machine. And a PULL hitter. He's going to die at Safeco...it's as predictable as the obvious fact that Obama was going to fail as President.

5
ghost's picture

1) The spray shows that he'd have had about 16 homers at Safeco, even while he was dialed in at the plate. Shave 8-12% off the distances for anything hit to LCF, CF and the bullpen area, 5% off down the line shots, and 5% off balls to RCF and RF.
2) Look at the ejection angle for his home runs...they're mostly WAAAY higher than MLB average. He's hitting big sky high towering home runs...not line drives and slicing parabolas. We KNOW that high fly balls die worse at the Safe.
3) He's a dead pull hitter!
4) He has essentially ONE season hitting at even THIS level...and it's wholly inadequate for Safeco.
It's not the speed off the bat...it's the motion of the ball...just because I think Upton will fail horribly here doesn't mean I think all righty power hitters will fail. Sexson didn't fail (power wise)...he excelled because he was a TOPSPIN hitter. His balls cut into the wind. Upton is decidedly NOT a topspin hitter.
You have to go to scan 102 to see that Upton is a miserable choice for the Mariners...but there it is. Not only is he a baseball moron...he's also a terrible scouting fit for the Mariners.

6
ghost's picture

They have no room for Smoak.
They might, however, be interesting in, say, ICHIRO.
Just saying. :)

7

You can't ignore home/road splits for this simple reason......we blogos are all making Safeco all about home/road splits.
If you're going to highlight Safeco's impact, then you can't ignore 'Zona's impact.
I would be willing to do the Upton deal, I think (well, maybe), if I knew that we were fielding a Wells/Saunders/Upton OF next year....AND....We didn't give away the farm.
Say, Paxton, Guti, Smoak? 2 out of 3?
All three and they throw in a prospect, too?
I can see Smoak being involved in this kind of deal, Arizona assuming all that desert air will recharge him.
Which is another reason you can't discount Arizona home/away splits. I'm sure they certainly consider it.
I might do that.
If we get an Upton, then we needto clear room for whichever young guys start to rake.
Smoak and Guti can go.
moe
edit: But ghost, you can't simple eliminate ALL RH hitting launchers. Would you decline to take Dale Murphey, after his age 24 season?

8

Career split:
.820 home
.931 road
obviously, most of that was in SD.
2011 with Boston:
.929 home
.986 road
AGON had a great 2011 season. He upped his road OPS by 55 points.
But, he upped his home OPS by 109.
Of course, players have random skews from norm all the time. That's the literal definition of outlier. Soriano never hit 46 HRs before or since. He never walked 67 times before or since, (he's actually never walked more than 45 in any other season).
Hey ... if Upton's stats were based on one year, I'd be skeptical too. When Jose Lopez had a better year hitting in Safeco than away you have a choice of assuming Lopez is immune to Safeco ... or that said year is an abberation.
No, Upton is *NOT* averaging 385 HRs. He's averaging long HRs ... almost exclusively in Arizona.
But, the Arizona park effects are not limited to Upton. The park skews as a 107 hitters park for more than a decade for all hitters combined. Safeco skews as a 94 pitchers park. If park effects exist AT ALL, ArizonaSeattle is going to be among the most extreme.
What I cannot fathom is that the argument isn't even that while the Park skews badly, Upton doesn't - therefore the impact won't be large. The argument seems (from my perspective), that BECAUSE Upton hits the crap out of the ball in one (and only one) location, he'll be just fine in the worst place on earth to hit.
The park skews big -- Upton skews big -- about what you'd expect, maybe a little more. He's hitting in a park where the ball flies very far for guys with even modest power. He has a wide BABIP skew in his favor at home - he has a monsterous HR skew in his favor at home.
But ... BECAUSE he gets lots more hits at home ... and way more HRs ... and BECAUSE his HRs travel very far when hit in Arizona ... (but he cannot even get the ball over the fence outside of AZ), therefore he is not benefiting from his park?!?
His skill is *NOT* "he hits HRs very far". His skill is: "He hits HRs very far in Chase Field".

9

Not with Paul Goldschmidt OPSing over 9000....900. They would, I think, be interested in Montero. That would certainly make the deal more complicated though as the Mariners would also have to retrieve the Diamondbacks Montero out of that, and then what to do with Jaso (as they are similar hitters while [Miguel] Montero is the far superior catcher).

10

It's not that we couldn't put together a package for Upton, it's how much do you want to pay for him and is anyone else out there available and better for you?
I'd rather have Butler, but he's beloved by the fans and I dunno if he's actually available or just internet-available. Off the top of my head, some of our options at the deadline or in the offseason:
David Wright, Shin-soo Choo (if the Indians fall fast), Quentin, Willingham, Headley, Morneau, Corey Hart, Hanley Ramirez, Butler, Gordon...and Upton.
If none of them seem appetizing, then start praying (harder) that our youth will hit, because there's not a lot left in next year's FA class unless you think Josh Hamilton wants to leave the two-time defending AL champs to play for a hundred loss team.
If Upton's on your list, then you need to be ready to pull the trigger now before someone else does and you're out of luck.
~G

13

From 2004-2008, Matt Holiday crushed the ball in Coors (.950-.1050 OPS every year) and was adequate on the road (.750-.850 OPS, topping .850 once in his final season in Colorado) and it was widely surmised that his days of superstar level production were done. And after his first 30 games in Oakland sporting a .697 OPS, there was some degree of verification. Since then, he has OPS'd .929.
Also, I don't think he's using the thin Arizona air to smack home runs farther, as he has several well over 400 feet in parks like Petco and Dolphins Stadium, I think he's using the fact that breaking pitches don't break as well in Arizona. It's a crutch to stalk flat sliders and curve balls that hang, but it's one you can work out of and not uncommon among players that age.
Also, as evidence that Justin Upton could at least potentially hit in Safeco, I present his Petco splits:
151 PA, .289/.358/.548, .308 BABiP, 1/2 BB/K rate.

14

What's the average ejection angle for home runs in MLB, I can't find that data anywhere, and looking through the home run data from 2011, Justin Upton doesn't appear on Highest Angle Off Bat until #349 (of 4600 or so Home Runs), his second appearance is #831 and then starts to appear consistently. Meanwhile, organizing it by Lowest Angle Off Bat, Just Upton makes his first appearance at #27, then again at #339, again at #608, again at #692, then starts to appear consistently.
So judging from that, I would say Upton is probably pretty close to average on his Home Run Angle, leaning low.

16
ghost's picture

I had been basing my assumption about the average angle off bat for HRs in the bigs on a fangraphs article that made the claim that a typical home run angle was very near the optimum projectile angle for long-distance parabolic flight with normal air resistance (30 degrees) - the guy who wrote it seemed to be thinking that it was a sign of how smart players were that they tended to try to hit the ball with the right angle to get the most distance just by feel.
Upton's angles all seem higher than 30 except for some of his balls right down the line.
But based on what you're saying...either the fangraphs guy was wrong or just imprecise. That does help...if Upton is just a typical slugger and not a Branyan-class towering fly hitter, that eases my mind a tad. I still don't like the GB/FB/LB data though. :\
Then again, arguing the contrary would be his 2B/3B rate, which is normal to a little elevated (per HR). Maybe he's getting better coverage than I thought.

17
ghost's picture

It looks like Upton is having an upward LD% trend...I remembered him as a decidedly mediocre line drive hitter, but he's moving from mediocre to a little above average and his GB rates are slowly increasing. It implies he's getting on top of the ball better with time. Though this year, the big GB% spike looks like a fluke that's hurting his power, rather than helping him at all. I need more footage of his 2011 and 2010 performance I guess to decide whether he's getting on top of the ball better lately. If so, my concerns for Safeco are diminished some.

18

Upton has 6/7 this year under 30 degrees and 22/31 last year. Also, last year, Shandler had his xPX(measure of speed off bat for flyballs and line drives where 100 is average) at 142 (165 in the second half).

19
Taro's picture

A-Gone ran a .380 BABIP last year (.322 career). His IsoP was still strong, but the lowest since 2007. He was declining since last season despite moving from a strong pitcher's park to a strong hitter's park.
With Upton, you need to figure whether the HRs at home happened because of park factors, or because he just happened to hit the ball well when at home that season, or whether its a mix of the two (and to what degree). In other words, if his home ballpark were Dodger stadium Upton would still have run a huge home/road split that season.
I don't think Upton is as much of factor of the ballpark as other RHs, just due to the fact that he hits the ball so hard. What he loses in raw OPS, he can gain back in wRC+.

Add comment

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.