Dustin Pedroia and His Wall

Reader Jeff asked us to take a look at Dustin Pedroia.  Here's a quick look at some of his Home/Road splits over the last three seasons.

Dustin Pedroia

You can see that Pedroia's power zones are slightly diminished on the road.  As a righty at Fenway, he's made good use of the left field wall.  It's no secret that the green monster often turns what would normally be a fly ball out in most other parks, into a base hit.  While he's hit fewer HRs at home than on the road in the last three seasons, he's produced far more doubles at Fenway (108 to 61 in his career). 

Fly balls are converted into outs more often than any other type of hit ball (other than pop ups, of course).  Since 2008, Pedroia has hit 43 fly ball doubles at home compared to 13 on the road; the majority of those Fenway doubles have come on balls hit off the wall in left.  He also has a 2.8% lower line drive rate at home than on the road (16.9% to 19.7%).  This is a little less than two sigma, so it's not really a sign of any substantive change.  Still, I wouldn't be surprised if Pedroia has made an effort to put the ball in the air to left more at home knowing that he has a better chance of getting a hit, thus resulting in fewer line drives.