Impacts of the First Base Carousel

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been seven (unless I missed someone!) first basemen that have found new homes that I haven’t covered in my first base rankings or with a separate park comparison article. So let’s now review the park factor comparisons for all these hitters that have either been traded or signed with a new team.

Paul Goldschmidt signed a one-year contract with the Yankees to act as their starting first baseman. This is precisely the type of move I expected that prevented me from including Ben Rice in the first base rankings. Let’s see how the move from the Cardinals to the Yankees might affect Goldschmidt’s results.

This is a really interesting comparison. I think most people perceive Yankee Stadium as a hitter friendly park. It’s not. It plays completely neutral for right-handers (we’ll see the left-handed version shortly). However, it’s one of the best parks in baseball for home runs, so most equate home runs to hitter friendly, even if the park suppresses everything else enough to actually completely offset the home run inflation.

Goldschmidt should seriously benefit from moving from the 22nd best right-handed home run park to the second best over the last three years. It could help him reverse the trend of declining HR/FB rates and ISO marks. Unfortunately, it won’t help his worrisome strikeout rate and SwStk% trend that has been increasing since 2020. In fact, Yankee Stadium inflates strikeouts, while Busch suppresses them, making for a pretty big swing. It helps explains the hit factor differences and could make it more challenging for Goldschmidt to enjoy a batting average rebound.

That said, since BABIP has always been affected by lady luck during any particular season, I think the move definitely increases Goldschmidt’s value since we can bank on a much improved environment for home runs. There’s a slightly greater risk that he gets dropped in the order though and doesn’t make it all season batting cleanup like we’re currently projecting. That would impact all his counting stats and reduce his value for as long as he’s hitting lower.

Goldschmidt wasn’t the only veteran joining the Yankees’ new look lineup. Cody Bellinger also finds himself in pinstripes after a trade brought him to the Big Apple.

This comparison looks almost identical to Goldschmidt’s! The two parks sport identical runs and overall park factors, but with significant increases in home run factors. Bellinger’s power has gone missing in action, as he’s coming off the lowest HR/FB rate of his career at just 9% and the second lowest ISO mark at .161. This from a 28-year-old who posted mid-20% HR/FB rates in 2017 and 2019 to go along with ISO marks over .300! What on Earth happened here?!

Fortunately, he’s getting out of the 23rd ranked park for left-handed home runs and arriving at the park that ranked third. The park switch should give him the best opportunity to enjoy a HR/FB rate rebound. Since he’s been an extreme fly ball hitter throughout his entire career (FB% over 40% every single season), he should be able to take full advantage of Yankee Stadium’s home run friendliness.

On the other hand, Yankee Stadium is significantly worse for every other hit type. So overall, it sports a lower hit factor, which is bad news for Bellinger’s BABIP and batting average. His BABIP has been all over the map throughout his career, bottoming all the way down at just .196 back in 2021, which was a partial season, and peaking at .319 in 2023. So it’s anyone’s guess what his true talent BABIP is, but wherever that talent lies, his batting average and BABIP may very well be worse in his new park.

That said, given the randomness of BABIP, I’m bumping his value up given the much better home run environment, just like I did with Goldschmidt.

Josh Bell signed a one-year contract with the Nationals, which was a bit surprising after the team had already acquired Nathaniel Lowe a week earlier. He’s been on five teams over the past three seasons, so it’s hard to gauge how his home park has affected his production. For this exercise, I’ll compare his last team’s home park to his new one’s, even though he recorded just 162 PAs with them.

This comparison is one of the most clear so far, with Nationals Park “winning” the majority of the factors, and nearly all that we really care about as fantasy players. I was shocked to learn that Chase Field ranks tied for dead last in left-handed park factor over the last three seasons. So not having to call that field home over a full season is a nice win. Bell won’t be moving to a good park for home runs, but Nationals Field plays neutral, which is still a big step up. Perhaps the switch won’t be enough to push his HR/FB rate back into the 20% range, where he was between 2019 and 2021, but it will give him a better chance of rebounding from the low-to-mid teens.

He should also enjoy a better park for strikeouts, as Nationals Park sports the lowest left-handed strikeout factor by far and the fourth lowest right-handed factor. That’s driving the slightly higher hit factor, which should help Bell’s batting average.

Overall, it’s pretty clear that the new park represents a better place for both home runs and batting average, increasing Bell’s value than had he remained in Arizona.

After recording career highs across many counting stat categories, Josh Naylor was traded to the Diamondbacks, where he’ll once again bat in the middle of a batting order and likely play every day without the worry of a platoon.

Once again, we find two parks sporting identical runs scored factors and overall park factors, yet the pathways to get to those scores matter. Naylor leaves a home park that was admittedly worse than league average for left-handed home runs, which sounds like a potentially good thing. But as mentioned in the above Bell analysis, Naylor’s new park ranks last in left-handed home run factor. So he goes from below average to the worst, which is still a massive swing.

Naylor posted a 22.2% HR/FB rate in the first half, but just a 13.2% mark in the second half, with each month falling between 13% and 13.6%. That first half was certainly out of character given his history, so it would seem that second half mark was a lot closer to his true talent level since none of his other Statcast metrics actually improved over the full season to believe his power skills actually increased. That’s a bad sign for 2025 as he’ll have to fight natural regression off what appears to be some fortunate results and the most pitcher friendly park for left-handed home runs.

The rest of the individual factors are relatively close that it makes me wonder how the two parks could sport identical overall park factors given the wide gap in home run factors! Anyway, this is a clear negative for Naylor’s value and if the home park plus natural regression does hit hard, it’s also possible he finds himself back to serving on the strong side of a platoon, rather than starting every day.

Before the Nationals signed Bell, discussed above, the team traded for Nathaniel Lowe. The veteran’s consistently low FB% has hampered his home run total and made him closer to replacement level these last two seasons in shallow mixed leagues. Might the move to Washington change that?

At first glance, this looks great! It’s almost a clean sweep for Nationals Park, taking all but two factors. Unfortunately for Lowe’s fantasy potential this season, one of the two factors Nationals Park is not more hitter friendly in is home runs. Globe Life Field ranks seventh in left-handed home runs, while Nationals Park has been exactly neutral, ranking fifteenth. That’s bad news for a guy who has been posting good, not great, HR/FB rates. Without a 20%+ HR/FB rate, he really needs to up his FB% to really deliver value as a first baseman.

His problem is he sports a career 29.6% FB% and has only exceeded 30% once (and barely) during his four full seasons. Of course, the low FB% has resulted in fewer pop-ups and boosted his BABIP, which has been consistently strong. That brings us to the good news — Nationals Park significantly suppresses strikeouts, which helps raise its hit factor. Those additional balls in play and total hits should help offset some of the loss in home run factor.

However, since this is fantasy baseball where home runs play an outsized role, I think the worse home run environment does reduce Lowe’s value a bit, even if he might be a bit better off in batting average.

The Astros made a big splash by signing Christian Walker to a three-year contract after getting very little production from first base last season. Walker was a late-bloomer, but has been a consistently solid hitter since his first full season at age 28 back in 2019. Let’s find out if the move to Houston changes his outlook.

This is kind of the opposite of Nathaniel Lowe’s park factor comparison! The initial knee-jerk reaction is my gosh this is bad news for Walker’s value. Minute Maid Park is almost swept, “winning” just two factors, and is clearly the worse offensive environment overall.

However, we learn that one of the two factors Minute Maid is hitter friendlier in is home runs, with a meaningfully higher factor. That’s a nice swing for Walker who owns a career 16.1% HR/FB rate and hits a ton of fly balls. His FB% has finished in the mid-40% range in each of the last three seasons, as he’s traded line drives for home runs. That’s good for his power, though bad for his BABIP and batting average. Perhaps this park switch could help him get back to the 20% HR/FB rate level he’s posted just once, during that first full season in 2019. He hasn’t been above 17.7% since.

On the other hand, he moves out of the third best park for right-handed hits and arrives at one that’s exactly neutral. That’s not great for a guy who’s posted below average BABIP marks for three seasons running and sports a career .250 batting average.

So overall, I’m calling for an unchanged value here, as Minute Maid is better for home runs, but worse for hits and overall run scoring, which could affect the rest of Walker’s non-home run related metrics.

Finally, the Guardians signed Carlos Santana to a one-year contract to replace the departed Naylor. This represents a reunion for player and team as Santana debuted with the team in 2010 and spent a total of 10 years there.

Santana had failed to make my initial first base rankings and he certainly won’t be joining them now.

Progressive Field has been significantly worse for switch-hitter home runs, while Target Field has inflated them. Amazingly, Santana’s HR/FB rate has been incredibly consistent, posting low-double digit marks for five straight seasons. At age 39 next year, perhaps the new unfriendly home park drives his HR/FB rate into single digits for the first time. He still hits a ton of fly balls and has kept his strikeout rate in the mid-teens, but those rates could get more difficult to maintain at his age.

Santana might benefit from a meaningfully lower strikeout factor though, but perhaps that just delays age-related decline there, rather than improves his rate. Overall, Progressive is just a worse run scoring environment than Target, thanks to the aforementioned gap in home run factor, along with a disadvantage in walk factor.

This is clearly a move that hurts Santana’s value, and even his OBP value takes a hit given the weaker walk factor at his new digs. With the presence of Kyle Manzardo who could take over at first base if Santana proves to be out of gas, he doesn’t make for a good investment.