“Talk about a dead pull hitter. The average true distance of a major league homer is 399 feet and the calculated speed of the ball as it left the bat is 103.6 MPH. Damon’s average distance is 380 feet per homer and his speed off the bat is 101.7 MPH. Does that mean a lot of cheapies for Damon? Hit Tracker actually helps us classify homers further, putting all big flies in four self-explanatory different bins: “Just Enoughs”, “Plentys”, “No Doubts” and “Luckys”.

Using those classifications, Damon has had one lucky homer at the New Yankee Stadium, four homers that had just enough on them to leave the yard, eight homers that were out by plenty and four no-doubters. The average distance on the no-doubter and ‘plenty’ homers was 378 feet; not tape measure shots by any stretch, but they had plenty enough on them to give some Yankee fan sitting in some overpriced right field seats a souvenir. ”

So the mean distance of all HRs is 399, and Damon’s mean HR distance was 380, then later he says the mean distance of Damons NYS “plentys” and “no doubts” was 378, lower than his overall mean. If all of the numbers are correctly stated, the writing is unambiguous that damons mean “plenty” and “no doubt” NYS HR distance is less than his overall mean distance

Looking at the data on HitTracker I now realize that although I did read Saris correctly, my conclusion was wrong. Here is the link: http://hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2009_4101&type=hitter

the following “table” is the location, type (hittracker classification type, i.e. ND=”no doubt”), and distance, sorted by location, then type, then distance.

Location..Type……Dist
A………JE……..363
A………ND……..399
A………ND……..424
A………PL……..373
A………PL……..397
A………PL……..400
A………PL……..400
H………JE……..348
H………JE……..357
H………JE……..366
H………JE……..399
H………JE/L……..347
H………ND……..385
H………ND……..392
H………ND……..397
H………ND……..397
H………PL……..348
H………PL……..354
H………PL……..369
H………PL……..372
H………PL……..375
H………PL……..375
H………PL……..379
H………PL……..401

So the mean of his home ND and PL is 378.66, as Saris stated, the mean of his Home HR generally is 374.1, and his away mean HR distance is 393.7.

There is a very real sample size issue here, but I think Saris is right in attributing most of his newfound power stroke to NYS. However, we should be hesitant in doing so too readily, the leverage of that one long HR in an away game (424) is quite high because our n for away HR is only 7.

It’s also worth observing, that 6/7 of Damons road HR have been of the ND or Plenty variety. It’s quite possible in the sample size of one season that he is getting “lucky” at home (5 JE or JE/L HRs), and “unlucky” on the road (only 1 JE HR).

There is obviously something going on with the right field at NYS, be it the RF distance or some sort of “wind tunnel” effect. But it’s pretty unclear if Damons HR numbers from this year suggest that he will continue to be able to utilize this new power alley.

they don’t force the teams in fenway/phily/cinci to move their fences back… and the yanks are no where near that short all around.

You say his average homer distance was 380, and his average distance on “no doubts” and “plentys” was 378.

There is obviously something off here, because the mean of the set of the longest homers cannot be less than the mean of the set of all homers