Here’s the thing about Shohei Ohtani: No matter where he plays in 2024, he’s going to do damage. If the Red Sox could sign the superstar, though, just how good of a fit would he be at Fenway Park?
Ohtani hits from the left side, and there’s a long line of left-handed sluggers who have had success at Fenway, from Ted Williams to Rafael Devers. Typically, Fenway favors those left-handed hitters who can go the other way and take full advantage of the Green Monster (more on that in a bit), but it can also be a little more difficult to go yard to left field and especially left-center. That’s even more difficult on a 43-degree day with a 17-mph wind blowing in during a mid-April game.
Nonetheless, when you look at Ohtani’s career home runs mapped out over a Fenway Park overlay, it’s pretty clear that most of the dingers he has hit in his career would still get out on Jersey Street.
Based on Baseball Savant’s expected home runs by park metric, 153 of Ohtani’s 171 career home runs would have been home runs at Fenway, meaning he loses 18 home runs. That might seem like a lot, but it’s pretty much in line with the rest of the league.
One other note on the expected home runs: According to the Baseball Savant metric, only 148 of Ohtani’s home runs (23 fewer than his career total) would have been home runs at Yankee Stadium. That might be slightly surprising given the short porch in the Bronx, though that does seem to suggest Ohtani does more damage to other parts of the park, as well.
We’ve seen it at Fenway already, too, in a super-limited sample size.
The numbers back that up. Here’s his 2023 batted-ball breakdown based on Baseball Savant numbers.
Pull: 37%Straight: 37.8%Oppo: 25.2%
Those numbers are almost exactly league average across the board, suggesting Ohtani isn’t pull-heavy like a lot of sluggers can be. That’s a departure from 2020 and 2021, especially, when he was extremely pull-happy. To put the 2023 performance in some perspective, the 37% pull is slightly more than Devers (32.7%), and the use of the opposite field is basically right in line with the Boston third baseman (25.6%).
OK, so what exactly does that mean? Ohtani, like most elite left-handed hitters, would have the potential to eat up Fenway Park, assuming he leans into using all fields. The contact numbers are insane, as you might expect; Ohtani ranked in the 99th percentile last season in hard-hit percentage. Being able to generate that sort of exit velocity in a park like Fenway could mean a significant increase in dimples on the Monster.
Take Ohtani’s 2023 batted-ball spray chart. This chart has eliminated home runs and groundouts to give an idea of how he might be able to use the ballpark when he puts the ball in the air with some authority.
Most of those doubles and triples would still be doubles and triples, and some might even turn into home runs. The grey dots, though, are the really interesting bits of data. A lot of those grey dots — all of them outs — could easily turn into singles or doubles once they catch the tin.
This is all in addition to, you know, Ohtani being one of the best pitchers in the world, assuming he comes back healthy from his second Tommy John surgery.
This sort of exercise would return similar results at just about every ballpark in the league. This is the modern-day Babe Ruth, and he’s going to put up ridiculous numbers wherever he calls home in the future.
However, Fenway Park’s unique dimensions and history for certain types of hitters do seem to suggest Ohtani in a Red Sox jersey might be especially dangerous if he were to call Boston home.
