The Pull of Juan Soto Was Irresistible for the New York Yankees. Too Bad He’s Not Really a Pull Hitter.
Conventional wisdom holds that lefties benefit from Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch. For Juan Soto to take advantage of that dimension, he’ll have to stop being an opposite-field hitter.
When the New York Yankees acquired Juan Soto in a trade with the San Diego Padres on December 7, they added much more than a left-handed power bat that had been missing in a stadium where lefties can seemingly reach out and touch the short porch in right field.
They added a complete package at the plate who, at 25, is one of the youngest players ever to hit 150 career home runs and by far the youngest to draw 600 walks. Among hitters with at least 3,000 plate appearances, Soto’s lifetime on-base percentage ranks among the top 20 all time.
Normally, we’d begin to assess how much better Soto could be in pinstripes by looking at how left-handed hitters’ stats tend to improve at Yankee Stadium, where the right-field fence is 20+ feet closer to home plate than it is in left. According to Seamheads’ ballpark database, Soto will be moving from a below-average home run park for lefties in San Diego to the MLB’s third-most lefty-friendly park in the Bronx (the other two are Globe Life Field in Texas and American Family Field in Milwaukee).
Even though Soto will only play half of his games in a more favorable ballpark, we’d typically expect this to have a big impact on his numbers. Running Soto’s career stats through Seamheads’ park factors suggests that Soto would have hit nearly 25 extra home runs and had an OPS 30 points higher as a member of the Yankees than what actually he produced with the Washington Nationals and the San Diego Padres.
But that projection assumes Soto would benefit from playing in Yankee Stadium as if he were a typical lefty, which he is not. For Soto to take advantage of the closer fence in right, he’ll have to make changes to his swing and his approach at the plate.
Through his first six seasons, Soto hit the majority of his 160 career homers to straightaway center or to the opposite field. According to Baseball-Reference, only 28% of his homers have been to the pull side (compared to an MLB average of 52% for lefty batters last season).
When you plot the Statcast data for all of his career fly balls against the dimensions of every park in the majors, fewer had the distance to find the stands at Yankee Stadium than at many other venues, including his former home parks in Washington and San Diego. Because Soto hit a lot of homers not to the pull side, those balls wouldn’t have left the yard at Yankee Stadium (because its left-field power alley is farther away) and he didn't pull enough balls to make up for it with extra hypothetical home runs to right field.
For Soto to take full advantage of Yankee Stadium’s inviting fence in right, he’ll need to focus on pulling the ball at an above-average rate, something he’s never done. His batting average is highest on balls hit to the opposite field (.378 versus .333 when pulled) and his OPS is highest on balls hit to the opposite field (1.085 versus .962 when pulled).
The good news is that Soto’s hitting talent is so advanced that he simply may have been tailoring his swing to his previous home parks. It’s not out of line to think he might do the same for the closer right-field fence in New York.
And he’s not the only player who could take aim at those bleachers next summer. With the additions of Soto and fellow outfielder Alex Verdugo this offseason, New York seems to be getting back to its roots when it comes to lefty hitters.
We can see their historical trend by looking at the share of Weighted Runs Created by lefties among the Yankees’ nine most frequently used hitters each season. (For switch hitters, we’ll split their wRC according to the handedness of opposing pitchers faced.) During the heyday of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1929, for example, the Yankees’ primary lineup got a whopping 72% of its offensive production from the left side of the plate — a remarkable share, given that only 46% of AL plate appearances were taken by lefties that year.
The Yankees continued their reliance on left-handers over the ensuing decades, even as they moved into a new park (with similar dimensions), peaking as a franchise in 2014 with 79% of their offense coming from the left side of the plate. (Aside from Derek Jeter, every member of New York’s primary lineup that season was either a lefty or switch hitter.) But since 2017, as the Yankees entered their Aaron Judge Era, the team got progressively more reliant on right-handed hitting — an oddity for a team at Yankee Stadium. In 2023, a franchise-low 13% of wRC by the main lineup came from lefty batters, with only Anthony Rizzo and switch-hitting Oswaldo Cabrera stepping into that batter’s box on a regular basis.
Soto and Verdugo can’t reverse that trend overnight. But based on FanGraphs’ 2024 forecast, 45% of wRC from the top nine Yankees in projected plate appearances is set to come from left-handed hitters. If that prediction holds, it would be the Yankees’ greatest share of offensive production from lefties in a season since the 46% they posted in 2017.
Although his swing doesn’t seem tailor-made for the Bronx, Soto is still a great fit for the Yankees. New York desperately needs another productive superstar to keep the offense afloat when Judge misses time — a huge flaw in recent editions of the team — and it doesn’t matter very much if that offense comes in the forms of home runs or doubles in the gap.
But in a new park that practically begs for the ball to be pulled to right field, Soto may find a new kind of “power” swing suits him just fine. After all, where else but the Bronx can seemingly routine fly balls to right field fall from the sky and come down as souvenirs?
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