On Tuesday, the New York Mets agreed to a four-year contract with free agent outfielder Jason Bay. According to reports, the deal will pay Bay roughly $66 million.
The pact has drawn mixed reactions. Supporters cite Bay's righthanded power, patience and even surprising speed: he has 66 stolen bases in 80 career attempts and has posted at least two triples in every full season of his Major League career.
Critics point to his miserable defense. He is about a dozen runs on the wrong side of average in a position (left field) usually populated with old, slow players anyway. They also note that Citi Field yielded the fewest home runs in baseball last season.
Bay, it might thus be reasoned, stands to lose a substantial portion of his offensive value (closely tied to his 36 home runs) in the cavernous confines of the Big Citi.
Once upon a time, these rudimentary observations might have been the best we could do in estimating the true effect of Bay's new home. Today, however, we can do quite a bit better.
The Web site hittrackeronline.com provides cutting-edge data about every home run hit in Major League contests in 2009. Included in these data are translated distances for all homers, showing how far each would go under standardized conditions of weather and circumstance.
By comparing the standard distance of each of Bay's homers to the standard dimensions of Citi Field, accounting for the part of the park to which Bay hit each and for the differences in wall height between Citi and Bay's old home (Boston's Fenway Park), we can begin to get a picture of the overall impact of his move.
This gets very involved, but in essence, it's a wash. That's right. Bay hit 15 of his round-trippers at home last season. Citi Field's much deeper dimensions (the left-field foul pole is some 25 feet farther away than is Fenway's) would suppress that total to just 10.
However, Bay also clubbed five doubles high enough off Boston's Green Monster (or deep enough into the reaches of the park's 420-foot right-center field) to rate as homers at Citi.
On the road, the impact of the innumerable changing environments is impossible to quantify. And it is equally infeasible to determine which of Bay's lost homers would be doubles and which fly outs. Thus, it is only safe to presume that, barring a David Wright-like psychological aversion to the Mets' new home park, Bay will be largely unaffected.
That said, we should expect some regression from Bay in 2010. He gained about 35 runs more than the average hitter on fly balls in 2009, one of the league's highest totals. He posted negative values in runs above average on ground balls and line drives, however, and his 49 percent fly ball tendency is not a formula for success at Citi Field.
Bay will also be patrolling a much larger left field this year than last, adding to the strain on his already balky 31-year-old knees. That may inhibit his effectiveness, or cost him playing time, or slow him down on the base paths.
Working in his favor on this last point, however, the Mets attempted one more steal than did Boston last season, even without a healthy speed demon like the Red Sox's Jacoby Ellsbury on their squad. That could allow Bay to reach double digits in steals again in 2010.
Finally, we must make an adjustment to compensate for Bay's league switch. No longer will he fight tooth-and-nail in the toughest division in all of baseball. Rather, he can come to the National League with the luxury of knowing that the best pitcher in his division may still be on his team. Even with the Phillies' acquisition of Roy Halladay, Bay will face no stiffer competition in his new surroundings than he did in Boston.
For what it's worth, Bay has five hits in 15 at-bats versus Halladay over the past two seasons, and has taken him deep in each of those years. He hits pitchers well without regard to handedness, which will come in handy in the balanced (J.A. Happ and Cole Hamels from the left side; Halladay, Josh Johnson and Jair Jurrjens from the right) NL East.
Eventually, the Mets may come to regret this deal. Bay could move to first base in a year or so in order to save his knees and improve the team defense. That would help. In the meantime, however, Bay (who, to be fair, committed zero errors last season) will remain a positive offensive force.
Fantasy players need not fear his new digs. Bay will likely slug 30 home runs again next season, and stands an excellent chance of stealing 10 or more bases again as well. If he gets the boost so many American League stand-outs receive when returning to the inferior NL, he could even equal his 36-homer, 119-RBI output of a year ago. Citi Field, as it turns out, is not where all home runs go to die.
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