Yankee Stadium not built for A-Rod’s benefit after all

I’ll be honest, when I sat down to write this post I was ready to theorize about how the new Yankee Stadium was built for the purpose so Alex Rodriguez could break Barry Bond’s all time home run record. I was certain that there was a conspiracy theory that Yankee Stadium was specifically engineered to create wind tunnel and turn ordinary fly balls into home runs.

But then something happened; it turns out that Yankee Stadium is not built for A-Rod’s benefit after all. A quick peek at his hit charts over the past few seasons shows that the stadium is actually working against Alex Rodriguez.

2009 – 3 of 15 home runs hit to right field.
2008 – 4 of 21 home runs hit to right field.
2007 – 3 of 26 home runs hit to right field.
2006 – 4 of 20 home runs hit to right field.

If Alex Rodriguez were a typical right field home run hitter, then that would justify the suspicions about the stadium being built to benefit Alex Rodriguez’ pursuit of 762 career home runs. But since the majority of his home runs at Yankee Stadium (the old one and version 2.0) clear the center field or left field wall, the stadium design does not benefit A-Rod at all.

In actuality, the player who has benefited most from this has been Mark Teixeira. 12 out of 19 of his home runs this season have cleared the right field wall at Yankee Stadium.

So unless the New York Yankees organization is planning on having Teixeira stay with the team to break the all time home run record, it appears Alex Rodriguez’ home run total at new Yankee Stadium won’t be much more inflated than any other stadium in major league baseball.