From Mark Feinsand:
But Swisher has done most of his damage on the road, hitting 20 of his 23 homers away from the friendly confines of Yankee Stadium. He’s the anti-Johnny Damon.
“I’m just trying to prove to everybody that hitting home runs at Yankee Stadium isn’t that easy,” Swisher said with a chuckle.
How’s this for odd? Swisher has four homers at Camden Yards this season and three at Yankee Stadium. How is that even possible?
“I don’t even want to talk about it,” Swisher said. “I just want to keep it going.”
Joe Girardi said he’s not trying to figure it out, either.
“We’ve hit more home runs than any other team on the road as well, and Swish might be a big reason for that,” Girardi said. “I don’t try to figure out anything with Swish.”
The numbers are quite stark, as Steve Lombardi points out with these splits:
Split G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG
Home 60 230 175 23 35 10 0 3 20 47 49 .200 .373 .309
Away 64 268 233 42 66 17 1 20 52 31 59 .283 .363 .622
Swisher has been a superstar on the road, while coming in at replacement level in the comfy confines of Yankee Stadium. The Yankees have 90 home runs on the road and Swisher has 20 of them, an astounding 22% share. He leads the team in slugging and RBI on the road, and is 3rd in doubles and 4th in hits. He is a big reason that the Yankees have the 3rd best road record in baseball, just behind the Phillies and Angels.
The question is, why does Swish have such an extreme split? He does seem like the kind of guy who wants to please the NY crowd, and may be pressing while at home. However, he has never exhibited a split like this before, suggesting that it may just be luck. There is nothing in his swing that should make Yankee Stadium a more difficult place for him to hit dingers. It is probably an anomaly that will even out over time.
What do you think? Do you have an explanation?
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9 Responses to Swisher A Road Warrior
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TIQ IQ
I’m going to go with the Chris Duhon argument here. NY has a better night life than Baltimore, hence Swisher is more adversely affected by the after hours clubs at Home than on the Road. I’m only half kidding here.
I don’t like making those kind of assumptions about a player’s personal life. It is possible, but I bet the team would know of it and have stopped it.
Yeah and it’s not like he doesn’t get hits in New York he just doesn’t get the Hrs.
Well actually he hits .200 at Yankee Stadium, I’m not so sure I believe the night life part (although I could see Nick partying) but something is up.
I was looking at his home runs on hit tracker.
If you compare Swisher’s HRs to Damon’s HRs, for example, Swisher doesn’t hit many big flys directly down the RF line at Yankee Stadium whereas Damon does. Most of Swisher’s homers end up being to CF or to LF with only a few going to right-center (Damon has no HRs to LF this year).
I think he’s trying to pull too much when he’s at home and it’s not working for him. He knows that he hits most of his homers to LF and to CF and he seems to be overly aware of the distance to CF and LF in Yankee Stadium. That’s why he tries to send the ball to RF and it works against his strength (sending the ball the other way).
I didn’t mean “pull too much,” necessarily, rather that he’s trying to swat the ball out to RF too much (whether hitting left-handed or right-handed).
You’re right Swisher doesn’t have the uppercut home run swing that Damon and Tex do and he isn’t as strong physically as Cano and he doesn’t jerk his body like Hinske does, he almost has an Arod mentality as far as going to CF somewhere or the other way is his bomb left handed and most of the time he pulls right handed.
Inline with what you’re saying Chris, I looked at his stats over the years and he doesn’t appear to have much of a HR swing as a lefty. Most of his homers come as a right-handed hitter and, therefore, it makes sense that he hasn’t hit many homers in Yankee Stadium given how Yankee Stadium–even the new Stadium—plays for right-handed hitters who tend to go to center or left.
Which is actually interesting when you consider he is naturally left handed so you would assume most of his “Power” would come from the dominate side… you see something like this in the power Tex has left handed but he is just as stronger if not more so with his dominate right hand.