Alex Bregman Lands in Boston

Last week, Alex Bregman finally found a new home, signing a three-year contract with the Red Sox. After spending his entire nine-year career with the Astros, it’s going to take a while to get used to him donning a different uniform, and calling a new ballpark home. So let’s consult the park factors to see how the move might affect his performance.

Interestingly, both Minute Maid and Fenway have their quirks that affect their park factors. We’ll start by reviewing the hit type factors. Fenway easily sweeps the non-home run factors. Its singles factor ranks fourth highest, doubles sixth highest, and triples ninth highest. If you’re a hitter who struggles with a low BABIP, Fenway is one of the top targets to hit in.

On the other hand, Minute Maid was exactly neutral for singles, while it marginally suppressed doubles, and was the sixth worst part for triples. Of course, the triples factors barely matter here, as Bregman has hit just 18 over his entire career. But the improvement in singles and doubles factors is massive.

For his career, Bregman has posted just a .276 BABIP at home (and .284 mark on the road), which is exactly the type who you’d think could benefit most from a move to Fenway. For his career, he has posted a bit of a higher fly ball pull rate than league average, but that mark has been down the last two years. If he could bring it back above 30%, that could result in a lot of doubles banging off The Green Monster that may have been caught in Houston.

Amazingly, Bregman’s highest career BABIP in a season is just .311, recorded during his first full year back in 2017. Since, he hasn’t even posted a mark above .289, so it should be fun to see how much playing half his games at Fenway will boost his mark.

The remaining hit type factor is home runs. From his career spray chart, it’s clear that the majority of his home runs have been pulled, and he has likely taken advantage of the shorter distance to the Crawford Boxes. Though, his career home HR/FB rate of 12.8% is actually not that much higher than his road mark of 11.6%, so perhaps he didn’t benefit as much as you and I assumed. The park does inflate right-handed home runs, so this is a mild surprise that there wasn’t a wider home/road split.

Fenway is dead neutral for right-handed home runs, as the short distance of The Green Monster is offset by the height, so it actually takes away home runs and turns them into doubles. What’s scary is that Statcast calculates that he would have hit meaningfully fewer home runs playing in Fenway compared to Minute Maid over his career. He has posted a HR/FB rate in a tight range between 9.8% and 11.3% since 2020, but I’d say he’s at risk of dipping back into single digits again based solely on the park switch. Of course, it’s always possible he ups his Barrel% and taps into more power, which would obfuscate the effects of the park change on his home run power. But assuming his underlying skills remain stable, he’s going to lose home runs with the move.

Hopping right along, we get to the overall hits factor, which unsurprisingly favors Fenway. Next are the plate discipline related factors, walks and strikeouts, along with OBP. What’s fascinating here is that Fenway suppresses walks and increases strikeouts, while Minute Maid has been around neutral for both, yet Fenway boosts OBP, because that hit factor more than offsets the fewer walks and additional strikeouts.

Bregman’s walk rate fell off a cliff last season. After six straight seasons with a double digit mark, he suddenly fell into single digits for the first time since his first full year in 2017. Obviously, moving to a park even worse for walks isn’t going to help him rebound, but I would imagine he’ll still do so, at least partially, despite the less favorable new home. On the other hand, his strikeout rate has remained quite stable, while his SwStk% remains at an elite level. Perhaps his strikeout rate jumps above 14% for the first time since the short 2020 season, but so many other factors could overshadow the effect of the park.

Finally, we get to the runs scored and overall park factor. Though Minute Maid is the better home run, walk and strikeout rate park, The Green Monster’s effect on hits is too much to overcome, making Fenway the more hitter friendly stadium.

So to sum it all up, we should expect Bregman’s BABIP to rise, driving an increase in batting average and OBP. However, he could take a hit in HR/FB rate and home runs. It’s hard to say the overall effect on his fantasy value because more hits should increase his runs scored and batted in, but fewer home runs should reduce them back. As a result, since batting average always fluctuates anyway and home runs are a bit more predictable, I would say that his value shouldn’t shift much, if at all. He’s still going to hit near the top of a better than average lineup, while contributing marginal positive value across the board.