Joe Dimaggio had toughest park to hit in AND the league overall was easier for LH batters to hit.
1948_Swell_Robinson
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Joe Dimaggio's numbers were suppressed by his home park more than any other all time great, and in fact, the entire league overall had parks that favored left handed hitters. I'm not going to bore anyone with the statistics, but the math supports the visual aids here as well. The league splits show the favorable advantage too. Yes, I know that the league splits are also influenced by the fact that there are more RH pitchers for lefties to hit, but I go beyond that factor with another key step to show that the league did indeed favor left handed hitters more so than RH.
In the specific case of Dimaggio, you can see below how all the RF fences would fit into the left field of Yankee Stadium. These are the distances of the right field fences around the league, flipped and superimposed into the Yankee Stadium left field. Included in there is Yankee Stadium's RF.
If you flip left field of Yankee stadium into RF of Fenway, you can also see that Ted Williams was NOT as handcuffed by his home park as much as Dimaggio by his, as some have suggested. You can clearly see that Yankee Stadium LF was much larger than Fenway RF. In fact, Williams hit the longest home run ever at Fenway in RF, and that only clears the distance of the Yankee stadium left field by a few rows.
Also, Centerfield is also much bigger in Yankee stadium, and deep left center field in Fenway was also quite small, and those are areas that left handed hitters like Williams benefitted from to offset his further RF.
For fun, if you have ever seen players hit the ball on top of the roof at Old Comiskey, here is where Yankee Stadium left field fence sits on top of Comiskey Park(a big park as it is).
One of the most extreme parks in the league that favored left handed hitters was League Park in Cleveland. The visual should say it all. The splits also agree. No stats here, none needed.
I read one of Bill James's studies about Dimaggio's home park hurting him, and his missing war years, and he came up with new career totals to highlight better how good Dimaggio was. James needed to go one step further in that study and include the fact that league's parks overall configurations hurt RH hitters, compared to their LH counterparts.
The reality is that Joe Dimaggio is actually one of the most underrated players ever. Most don't take into account his gigantic LF, many forget he lost years to the war, and nobody takes into account the overall park configuration hurting him compared to the Left Handed hitting greats of the era, and to future RH hitters who didn't have that same problem to deal with.
Ok, one stat. We have heard how Ruth outhomered every team in the league one year. Impressive, but other guys in the league back then out homered entire teams too, and some several teams. Gavvy Cravath out homered 7 teams by himself in TWO different years. Tillie Walker out homered five teams one year. Cy Williams out homered four. Etc. Home Runs were kind of new.
Looking at the stadium configurations above, in 1937 Joe Dimaggio hit 19 home runs at HOME in 306 at bats. Every other RH hitter in the league had 3,029 at bats IN YANKEE STADIUM. In 3,029 at bats they hit 32 home runs.
Dimaggio was one home run per 16 at bats in Yankee Stadium
The entire league of RH hitters were one home run per 94 at bats in Yankee stadium.
Keep in mind, Dimaggo wasn't just a home run hitter. I'm sure those home run numbers would be even better if he was not also such an extreme contact and high average hitter. He also played a graceful Centerfield and was a smart hustling baserunner. He was the complete player in every facet to go along with being the best hitter(maybe close 2nd) in the league while in his prime(yes as good as Williams when you consider the park dimensions).
When you talk about 'best players in their prime Dimaggio is as good as ANYONE, when you look at ALL the factors known and unknown.
Comments
Thanks for posting this. I have been saying for quite some time how good DiMaggio was.
Agree. When people wonder why he won the MVP over Williams a few of those years....wonder no more
Joe was right there with Willie Mays as a defender. He was said to have made it look easy because he was so "graceful".
Williams overshadowed him as a hitter, but there was no comparison when it came to playing the field.
Yes, agreed. Though the hitting is much closer than most realize, peak wise at least. Williams had the longer career that Dimaggio can't match, but in their prime, Joe D was as good as anyone.
Where is Dallas? I need to read his point of view on this before I come up with my final conclusion 🧐
great post swell, and thanks for including the visuals....................i would not have read every word without them
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
If he was so good, why was he bypassed twice for the HOF???????
This is awesome! Do you have Tiger Stadium/ Briggs Stadium/ Navin Field by any chance?
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Killebrew was passed over a few times as well.
Yes, that is why I tried to avoid too many of the statistical measurements. They are long and have many steps...and is boring to most. Simply looking at the graphic of Yankee Stadium engulfing every Right Field in the league gives the eye and logic all it needs.
Here's a story told by Mickey and confirmed to me in person by Killebrew;
One game in the 1960's Killebrew hit 4 tremendous shots into deep center field at Yankee Stadium. Mantle caught them all for outs.
After the last one, Mickey was running in, Harmon was pi$$ed, Mickey was chuckling and tossed the ball to Harmon. Harm asked "How the ?????? do you hit a home run in this park?" Mantle just laughed, later saying he thought Harmon was going to throw the ball back at him!
Either the crack pipe was passed around by the writers, or;
"DiMaggio announced his retirement in December 1951 and became eligible for the Hall of Fame a year later, as he was exempt from the newly instated five-year waiting period. When he was first up for induction in 1953, fans considered him a shoo-in to become a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
The Sporting News even ran an article with the headline “DiMag Heads for Speedy Election to Shrine” before the BBWAA announced the results. Early returns supported that thought, but it wasn’t meant to be. DiMaggio earned just 44.3% of the writers’ vote, finishing in eighth place. Many believe he didn’t get more votes because a lot of voters didn’t like choosing a player just a year after he retired. (Lou Gehrig is the only player to enter the Hall of Fame that quickly.)
The following year, DiMaggio went up to 69.4% of the vote but still missed induction by 14 votes. He was fourth on the ballot in 1954, but again voters didn’t want to vote for him just two years out of the game. Many believes the voters wanted to recognize players who’d been waiting longer. The three players inducted that year had each been on the ballot for between nine and 14 years."
Or both.
Just a few stats. Joe Dimaggio's prime before he left for WWII. From 1936-1942. He was 27 yrs old in 1942.
This is just his road stats. He gets unfairly beaten down enough because nobody recognizes his death valley home park.
AVG .344
OB% .405
SLG% .628
Keep in mind that STILL does not account for the fact that overall the parks still favored left handed hitters. League park alone tips the needle to an unfair degree toward the league's left handed hitters(see the visual above). Remember, they only had 8 teams in the league, so only one park can turn the needle to a significant degree.
That is Ruthian offensively....and from a gifted centerfielder that could run the bases.....AND he never struck out either. Sabermatricians give zero to negligible credit for not striking out...but it helps win games...especially going agains an ACE where you have to scratch and claw for every run you can get.
Its no wonder the old timers who saw DiMaggio play, saw Ruth play, and saw Mantle play....would swear that DiMaggio was the greatest baseball player of them all. When Dimaggio is almost out homering the entire right handed league at Yankee stadium, I could see how they get that impression...in addition to him being the complete baseball player.
High contact and high average power hitters do lend well to middle of the order hitters, more so than high walks do. Walks are valuable as well, but hits and contact for middle of the order hitters carry an importance that is severely under appreciated in the Sabermetric community. I say severely because they don't even recognize it.
One measurement that shows how effective a middle of the order hitter is at getting runners in is seeing the percentage of runners that scored from the hitters at bat. BRS%. The percentage of all baserunners who score on the batters play.
Joe Dimaggio was at 21.5% and his league average was 14.9%
Babe Ruth was at at 20.2% and his league average was at 16.2%
Mick Mantle was at 16.2% and his league average was at 14.0%
Those are not park adjusted either. So that gap widens even more when Death Valley is added(or removed) to the equation.
DiMaggio got that job done better than anyone. Ever.
PS NONE of the park adjusted stats that are used do not account for the Death Valley factor for DiMaggio. There are probably years where Dimaggio actually gets discredited in those sabermetric stats when Yankee Stadium is seen as a hitters park when the RF positive outweights the Left field negative.
To point out again:
We have heard how Ruth outhomered every team in the league one year. Impressive, but other guys in the league back then out homered entire teams too, and some several teams. Gavvy Cravath out homered 7 teams by himself in TWO different years. Tillie Walker out homered five teams one year. Cy Williams out homered four. Etc. Home Runs were kind of new.
Looking at the stadium configurations above:
in 1937 Joe Dimaggio hit 19 home runs at HOME in 306 at bats.
Every other RH hitter in the league had 3,029 at bats IN YANKEE STADIUM that year....and they only hit 32 home runs.
That is how tough Yankee stadium was on RH hitters back then and how good Dimaggio really was.
Absolutely, Yankee Stadium was tough on RH hitters. But, Joe D. got his HR in Yankee Stadium against a variety of pitchers, many of them lefties, and many of them outright terrible. The RH hitters on the Yankees opponents faced a good RH pitcher almost every AB, and the only LH pitcher the Yankees had was Lefty Gomez who had an epic season in 1937. Nobody hit Gomez well in any stadium that year.
So sure Joe D. hit HR in Yankee Stadium better than anyone, but the comparison to the rest of the league is a little apples to oranges.
And it bears repeating, although you didn't address this point, that Babe Ruth hit more HR on the road than he did at home in his career. I don't know if Ruth ever hit a HR that barely cleared the wall down the line in right, but if he did, he sure didn't hit many.
There is a book titled... "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball's Greatest Slugger", which covers a similar aspect of the parks of that era with a focus on Babe Ruth.
So how does this analysis benefit the revisionist view of the careers of Bill Dickey followed by Moose Skowron and even Hank Bauer?
If this was an issue for Joe... seems a compelling argument can be spread among multiple players.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.