Nelson Cruz Home Run Estimates
Nelson Cruz got a one year deal with the Orioles last year and had a career season. He had career highs in Home Runs, RBIs and Runs. Most people considered him an after thought on draft or auction day. He ended up as one of the great buys of the 2014 season and he paid his owners handsomely. Well, he is a free agent again and he is probably looking at worse (or a lot worse) home run numbers depending on where he signs.
His 40 league leading home runs where completely unexpected. Or were they? I am just going to look at his home run totals using Inside Edge batted ball data.
Begin calculation details
Inside Edge collects data on 99 different zones a batter can hit a ball. Each outfield zone is 45 ft deep and divided into 7 fair zones (left field, left center field, center field, etc). I found which Zones home runs where hit in and calculated a home run rate. I collected the average amount of fly balls and line drives which went for home runs in each zone in 2012 to 2014. I get an estimated home run rate per line drive or flyball in the zone.
For each batter, I multiply the number of flyballs and line drives they hit in a zone by its home run rate. Then I add each amount of estimated home runs together to get how he would do at a league average stadium or specific stadium given his batted ball mix. For the team estimated values, I used 50% of the stadium’s value and 50% of the league wide values. The estimated HR value can then be compared to a player’s actual value.
The data is not perfect. It is collected by stringers and the zones are fairly large. Right now though, it is probably the best hit data without Hitf/x being available.
End calculation details
Here are Cruz’s home run numbers from the past three season along with estimated values from Texas and Baltimore (½ home value, ½ league value).
Season: HR (actual), Texas (estimate), Baltimore (estimate)
2012 (in Texas): 24, 22.8, 29.6
2013 (in Texas): 27, 17.8, 23.0
2014 (in Baltimore): 40, 24.7, 31.0
His 2012 numbers look in line, but in both 2013 and 2014, he over performed his estimates. His Steamer projection agrees and has him only hitting 30 home runs for 2015. His home run total could drop even more depending on who signs him. I have calculated the values for each park from the last three seasons using Cruz’s batted ball mix. The table is ranked by overall total home runs from the past three season.
| YEAR | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | Total |
| Actual Home Runs | 24 | 27 | 40 | 90 |
| Orioles | 29.6 | 23.0 | 31.0 | 83.6 |
| Red Sox | 27.3 | 21.5 | 30.6 | 79.4 |
| Blue Jays | 27.9 | 20.6 | 29.8 | 78.2 |
| Angels | 27.3 | 21.0 | 29.9 | 78.2 |
| Brewers | 26.7 | 21.8 | 29.7 | 78.1 |
| Phillies | 27.1 | 20.8 | 29.8 | 77.7 |
| A’s | 26.4 | 20.7 | 28.9 | 75.9 |
| Reds | 27.1 | 19.6 | 28.7 | 75.4 |
| Padres | 26.4 | 19.9 | 28.5 | 74.8 |
| Astros | 27.1 | 19.1 | 28.1 | 74.4 |
| White Sox | 25.7 | 20.3 | 28.2 | 74.3 |
| Rays | 26.6 | 19.4 | 28.1 | 74.0 |
| Yankees | 27.7 | 18.3 | 27.2 | 73.1 |
| Twins | 25.8 | 19.6 | 27.5 | 72.8 |
| All Teams | 25.3 | 19.1 | 27.1 | 71.5 |
| Cubs | 24.0 | 20.1 | 27.0 | 71.1 |
| Braves | 24.6 | 19.3 | 27.0 | 70.9 |
| Nats | 24.7 | 19.3 | 26.9 | 70.9 |
| Mariners | 24.8 | 18.8 | 26.8 | 70.4 |
| DBacks | 24.2 | 18.3 | 26.2 | 68.7 |
| Rockies | 24.1 | 18.1 | 26.1 | 68.4 |
| Royals | 24.5 | 17.8 | 25.9 | 68.2 |
| Indians | 24.2 | 18.1 | 25.4 | 67.7 |
| Giants | 24.2 | 17.7 | 25.7 | 67.6 |
| Dodgers | 23.2 | 18.8 | 25.5 | 67.5 |
| Pirates | 24.3 | 17.4 | 25.0 | 66.7 |
| Cards | 23.3 | 17.9 | 25.5 | 66.7 |
| Mets | 23.5 | 17.6 | 24.6 | 65.7 |
| Rangers | 22.8 | 17.8 | 24.7 | 65.4 |
| Tigers | 23.3 | 17.1 | 23.9 | 64.3 |
| Marlins | 21.6 | 16.5 | 23.0 | 61.1 |
Now some of these values may look off from the normal HR park factors, but Cruz is a spray hitter. He does not pull his flyballs to take advantage of short left field porches. When he hits a flyball, he pulls it only 23% of the time. He hits them to the deep center field 37% of the time and for the last 40% he goes the opposite way. In certain parks his power will play down because he hits to the deepest parts. He lives in the middle of the field where max depth is more important than porch depth.
The Orioles are still the best fit for him.
I have not created weighted averages to turn the HR estimates into actual predictions yet (tough to do with only three seasons of data), but here are just a couple of quick HR estimates pointing to a change in the next season like we see with Cruz:
Victor Martinez
2013 Actual: 14
2013 Estimate: 19
2014 Actual: 32
2014 Estimate: 30.4
Billy Butler
2012 Actual: 29
2012 Estimate: 18.5
2013 Actual: 15
2013 Estimate: 12.1
Going into 2015, I would be conservative on my estimates for Cruz’s home run power. Even if he stays in a home run friendly park, he his number could top out at the Steamer estimates. If he signs with a team with a caverenous outfield, he could see his 2014 home total cut in half.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Where are the Rockies in that chart?
Corrected, I had two Royals
I think the bigger issue is his age\health. He has always had 35 HR power, but he never could stay on the field long enough.
Tangential point:
“His 40 league leading home runs where completely unexpected. Or were they?”
Let’s do a super simple analysis with all sorts of bad assumptions to answer this. From 2011-2013, Cruz hit 80 home runs in 1611 PAs, or about 5% of the time. Let’s assume Cruz’ home runs are described by a binomial distribution with p=0.05. Then the probability that he hits 40 (or more) home runs in 678 PAs (2014 total) is 16%. Not really crazy at all.
When a player has a lot of PAs and is good at something, the variability for counting statistics becomes huge.
In 2009 he averaged 41.7 homeruns over a 162 game span. In 2010 that number was 33. In 2011 it was 37.9. 2012 was the outlier with a 24.5 pace, but in 2013 it sprung back up to 40.1. Not really a surprise that he hit 40, it was just a matter of staying healthy long enough to reach that number.
Does this method take batted ball distance into account? Because Cruz is near the top in that category, which explains the HRs.
I don’t really like this method at all tbqh. Just because other people may or may not have hit a HR at a certain rate in a zone has no bearing as to whether that would apply for one particular batter. Or shall I say, Elvis Andrus fly balls to a zone should have no bearing on our estimates of Cruz’s fly balls to the same zone. Yet by this methodology utilizing average HR/FB or LD in a zone, you’re assuming that such is the case.
Yeah for real, Nelson Cruz is one of the best distance hitters in the majors. He can easily hit a ball 425+ feet, and those would be gone in any ballpark
No for false, Craig Gentry is one of the worst distance hitters in my local rec softball league. She cannot easily hit a ball 524+ feet, and those would not be gone in no ballparks.
I saw where the Mariners looking at signing him. That could be a huge mistake for Seattle playing him at Safeco Field.