Prince Fielder’s 2008-2011 Hits in Comerica Park
Posted: January 24, 2012 Filed under: Research Leave a comment »The Detroit Tigers agreed to sign Prince Fielder to a 9 year, 214 million dollar contract today. According to Seamheads, Miller Park has a home run park factor for LHB of 121. Comerica’s is 98. From katron, Prince Fielder’s hits superimposed onto Comerica Park:
2008
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2009
2010
2011
Here are all of Fielder’s 2011 home runs superimposed on all of the home runs hit in Comerica the past year. I used ESPN Home Run Tracker for the data and used “True Distance” instead of measured distance. The black line represents the minimum distance at each horizontal angle.
Note: According to katron, “Every hit is scaled (roughly) to the chosen park to display upon. Things like atmosphere effects or interaction with the walls are completely ignored since I lack the data to properly map the hits to the new field. Every location is where the ball was fielded by a player, not where it landed.” Also, according to Colin Wyers, “They’re not drawn to scale. Pixel to feet ratios are different in LF than RF in many parks.” So the difference is definitely stark, but take this with a grain of salt.
In 2011, Fielder hit 24 home runs in Miller Park. I count 11 home runs when superimposed on Comerica? It really looks like his power numbers are about to take a large hit. StatCorner keeps track of wOBA as well as HR park factors, here they are for left-handed batters in Fielder’s old and new divisions:
| Team | wOBA | HR |
| MIL | 100 | 118 |
| CHC | 104 | 119 |
| CIN | 103 | 120 |
| HOU | 102 | 107 |
| PIT | 100 | 99 |
| STL | 97 | 82 |
| Team | wOBA | HR |
| DET | 97 | 88 |
| CHW | 102 | 126 |
| CLE | 101 | 107 |
| KC | 103 | 71 |
| MIN | 100 | 91 |
