Tex’s home and road splits

I haven’t gone back and checked–and I don’t think I will–but I’d be willing to be that I’ve written more about this season than I have written about any other player. I’ve written about his BABIP and what he “should” be hitting and now I’m going to touch on his home/road splits during his Yankee tenure.

Yesterday before going to work, I had on MLB Network’s fantasy baseball show, “Fantasy-411.” I play fantasy baseball, but haven’t exactly paid much attention to any of my teams over the last month or so (probably more). Regardless, I enjoy watching this show every once in a while because it’s the only show on MLBN that gives more-than-lip-service attention to advanced metrics. Anyway, they were discussing first basemen yesterday and, of course, Tex’s name came up. One of the three hosts mentioned that Tex’s home/road splits–in terms of OPS–had calmed down a little bit this year. So after work, I decided to check out what’s been going on with Mark’s splits since he joined the Yankees.

For this article, I’ll be looking at wOBA, wRC+, BABIP, and HR% (HR/PA).

Career overall: .385/134/.296/5.20%

2009:
Home: .427/129/.316/6.88
Away: .377/126/.288/4.19

2010:
Home: .416/160/.304/5.34
Away: .320/95/.236/3.93

2011:
Home: .377/137/.215/7.19
Away: .346/116/.257/4.33

While 2009 was clearly Tex’s best year on the road as a Yankee, 2011 has been the most balanced. He’s hitting better on the road this year than he did last year and is hitting more homers on the road than ever (even w/o the homer vs. from last night). Ironically enough, it’s Tex’s home splits that are a little iffy this year. While he’s out homering himself by a lot, that’s pretty much all he’s doing with the bat. His walk rate at home is over 12% which is great, but when he’s putting the ball into play in the Bronx, the hits aren’t falling. I’ll take the homers and walks, obviously, but it’s still strange to see his home performance sliding. It would seem that he’s definitely tailoring his swing to Yankee Stadium because he’s definitely hitting home runs there, but not getting a lot of singles, doubles, and triples as evidenced by his ridiculously low home BABIP of .215 (!).

Despite the drop in home performance this year, it’s good to see his away stats trending back towards the 2009 levels. Hopefully, he can learn to find a balance his approaches and get his home numbers back up to where they were in the 2009/2010 seasons.