More About David Wright’s New Approach

Yesterday, we looked at how David Wright’s new “approach” to hitting (trying to make contact and not swinging for the fences in Citi Field) has affected his estimated run production.  The results were not great for Wright (but not entirely terrible, depending on your standards).  Ultimately, Wright was producing around 15 fewer runs in 2009 than he did the previous season.

Of course, Wright decided to hit two home runs last night in Philadelphia, so maybe he is starting to come around (or at least is starting to hit like the old David Wright on the road). 

But, let’s get back to the issue at hand – which is that Wright has been telling reporters that he doesn’t want to “look for a pitch to drive” because he is having a harder time hitting balls out of Citi Field compared to Shea Stadium.

The Hittracker website is an outstanding resource to look at things like this.  They catalog home runs, their distances, and the effects of ballparks on home runs. Now, in my internet searchings, it seems that the proprieter of Hittracker, Greg Rybarczyk, also collects data on near-misses – balls that almost make it out but fall short.  Some of his data on this is presented in this ESPN.com article from early July, which states that to that point:

• There had been 59 homeruns hit at Citi Field.
• There were 36 other balls hit that would have been homers at Shea, but fell short at Citi Field
• Two balls left Citi Field that would have fallen short at Shea (both down the right field line and both hit by Chase Utley of course)
• David Wright had the most “stolen” home runs with 6
• Those 6 Near-misses for Wright ended up as 2 triples, 3 doubles, and a single

That bears repeating – the 6 home runs that Citi Field had taken from Wright ALL ended up as base hits.  That is to say to he was not victimized by any balls “dying on the warning track” as Wright suggested to the New York Post last week.

In fact, of all of the 36 near-misses at Citi Field to that point – there were 8 fly ball outs, 3 singles, 21 doubles, and 4 triples.  For those 36 balls, instead of totaling 36 home runs with a 1.000 AVG and a 4.000 SLG%, these hitters had to “settle” for a .778 AVG and a 1.580 SLG%.  That’s not too shabby. 

Unfortunately, Rybarczyk doesn’t keep this data on his own website, so we don’t have completely up to date to work with.  Interestingly,  he was quoted in an ESPN article and a NY Daily News article last week updating the number of Wright’s stolen HRs to now be 8 (on which Wright has totaled 1 single, 5 doubles, 2 triples, and still 0 outs).  Unfortunately, Rybarczyk didn’t provide more data about other hitters at Citi Field past early July.

So, anyhow, let’s use the July data to to estimate what the 2008 David Wright (operating under his old “approach”) would have done at Citi Field.

In 2008, Wright hit .302, with a .390 OBP, and a .534 SLG%, with 33 home runs.

21 of Wright’s 2008 home runs were hit at home.  The Hittracker data from this July say that to that point at Citi Field, in total there were 95 “Shea Stadium Homers” hit but only 56 went out (59%).  Let’s similarly reduce Wright’s 2008 home HR total by 59% from 21 to 12.  There is no reason for Wright’s production on the road to change, even though it has because (apparently) Wright is unable to change his “approach” back and forth.

Anyway, this reduction is home HRs would give him 24 total HR on the season and 9 near-misses we have to account for.  If, on those 9 near-misses, Wright had to settle for a .778 AVG and 1.580 SLG%, his season totals would be as follows in the chart below.  The three columns below compare the actual 2008 David Wright, the estimated 2008 David Wright if he had played at Citi Field, and the 2009 David Wright projected over a 162 game season (using stats prior to last night’s game):

	2008 Wright	2008 Wright @ Citi	2009 Projected Wright
AVG	.302	.298	.315
OBP	.390	.388	.401
SLG%	.534	.498	.449
HR	33	24	10

Looking at the middle column, it is clear that, using his “old approach,” Wright would suffer a bit at Citi Field compared to how he actually did at Shea.  Of note, his SLG% would fall dramatically.  However, it would still be nearly 50 points higher than the SLG% that Wright and his “new approach” are registering in 2009.  Yes, the “new approach” has allowed Wright to hit for a better average and have a slightly better OBP. But David Wright is supposed to be a run producer for the Mets.  That’s what he’s paid to do and I’d suggest that a 13 point increase in OBP does not outweigh the importance of losing 49 points in SLG%.

Here is some of data to support that idea, from Baseball Musings’ Lineup Analysis Tool. A lineup composed of nine 2008 Old-Approach David Wrights hitting at Citi Field would look like this:

 

On the other hand, a lineup of nine 2009 “New Approach” David Wrights would look like this:

Ultimately, either version of David Wright is a fine baseball player. But it is not completely logical for Wright to be changing his approach to hitting based on the dimensions of his new ballpark.  Even with the home runs lost, Wright would still be a more productive hitter if he looked for more balls to drive in Citi Field.  Hopefully, last night’s 2 HR performance is the start of Wright reverting to his old form.