Xander Bogaerts Switches Coasts

Last Friday, the Padres signed Xander Bogaerts to an 11-year, $280 million contract, which gives them quite the middle of the order assuming a healthy Fernando Tatis Jr. Having spent his entire career in Boston, let’s consult the park factors to see how a move to a new home park for the first time might affect his results.

Yikes. At first glance, this doesn’t look like a very good landing spot for Bogaerts. Of the nine factors I highlighted a more hitter friendly park for, Petco was only more favorable in two of them. Let’s now discuss each one and how Bogaerts’s performance may be affected.

Starting with the hit type factors as usual, we find a clean sweep for Fenway. Bogaerts’ former home inflated each of the three non-home run hits. That’s not a surprise as the Green Monster has a massive effect on results. The wall often turns would-be flyouts in other parks into singles or doubles. While the Monster can take away home runs as well, it does increase BABIP, especially considering home runs are removed from the BABIP equation. On the other hand, Petco actually suppresses those three hit types. So not only is Bogaerts departing a hit friendly home park, but he’s going to one that is decidedly not friendly to balls in play falling for hits.

Throughout his career, Bogaerts has posted a significantly higher BABIP at Fenway compared to in away parks. His home .357 mark is well above his .314 mark away. That split is far wider than the league average that’s only a couple of points of BABIP. Clearly, points has benefited tremendously by his quirky home park from a hits perspective. He’s also coming off the second highest BABIP of his career. So his BABIP projection should take a hit with the park switch, and it could be a dramatic hit when compared to his 2022 mark.

Moving along to home runs, both parks suppress them, but Petco even more so. In his career, Bogaerts has actually posted a higher home HR/FB rate than away, 13.5% to 9.9%. That’s quite a surprise given the near neutral park factor. Over his career, he has pulled more of his flies and gone the opposite way less while at home versus away, which would seem to take advantage of the Green Monster to increase his BABIP, but hurt his HR/FB. Yet, he managed to increase both! Now I’m even more eager to see how he performs in a different park.

Next are the strikeout and walk factors where we finally come across a Petco “win”. For strikeouts, Petco slightly increased them, while Fenway slightly decreased them. Bogaerts has struck out slightly more in away parks, but that might just be the home field advantage talking, with the Fenway effect playing a limited role. On the walk side, Fenway has played completely neutral, and his walk rate split is almost identical. Petco actually increased walks, which could assist in getting him back up to a double digit walk rate.

We then get to the batted ball type factors. As usual, I did not highlight any GB or FB factors since there’s no hitter friendly or unfriendly values here. The two factors that do matter, LD and IFFB) are nearly identical. Both parks increased line drives, with Petco doing so slightly less. Bogaerts has been pretty much league average in LD%, with a career mark right there, and jumping between 19% and 22% most years. The park switch shouldn’t have an impact here. It’s a similar story for pop-ups, with both parks slightly suppressing them. Bogaerts has posted a slightly worse than league average career IFFB%, and the park switch shouldn’t have an effect. His home/away batted ball type splits are quite close, as well, so he didn’t seem to change his approach at Fenway, aside from the horizontal direction of his fly balls.

Finally, we land on the summary factor, the five year Basic, or runs scored, factor. Because of how hit inflationary Fenway is, it sports a very hitter friendly overall factor, while Petco reduces run scoring. This isn’t a surprise based on what we just discussed.

So overall, this isn’t a great move for Bogaerts. His BABIP projection, and resulting batting average, declines meaningfully, which should also reduce his RBI and runs scored forecasts. His HR/FB rate projection should also be lower than had he stayed in Fenway, which would also reduce those aforementioned counting stats. Based on our projections, he does move to a better lineup, though obviously each lineup now has (Padres) and doesn’t have (Red Sox) Bogaerts, so it’s closer than it seems. Whatever the real difference is, he’s definitely not heading to a significantly weaker lineup, so the hit in counting stats will be solely due to the park switch.

Since Bogaerts is coming off a season with just 15 home runs, it’s possible he won’t end up being overvalued on draft day. But I would still guess that the majority of owners won’t do the proper adjustments and are going to expect a near .300 average again, likely overpaying.