Top prospect, bust, post-hype sleeper, perennially injured, just a guy…who exactly is Brandon Belt? He always seems to be overhyped in the spring and underappreciated when he is playing well. Let’s see what the numbers can tell us about the Giants’ enigmatic first baseman.
The first thing I want to point out is that AT&T Park is the worst place for Brandon Belt. Literally, the worst. Let’s take a look at his career batted ball profile on Fangraphs:
His power has been almost exclusively to right center and far right fields. Notice that some of those blue dots to right center seem weirdly far behind the first row of black dots? That’s because AT&T Park’s right center field is the deepest in the league and it’s not close. It is a whopping 29 feet deeper than right center field at Marlins Park, which is the second-deepest right center field in the league. In fact, only dead center at Minute Maid Park is deeper than right center at AT&T. If you need any more proof that AT&T Park is holding Belt back, here is his Plus/Minus for home and road games:
Pretty significant. Let’s go one step further. Here are the biggest games Brandon Belt has had in terms of FanDuel points:
So he plays half of his games at AT&T Park and ONLY ONE OUT OF HIS FIFTEEN best games have taken place there. In fact, by simply playing Brandon Belt on the road against right-handed pitching, we can add pretty close to a full point in Plus/Minus:
If we were to deploy Brandon Belt against righties in stadiums with short right center fields (Citizens, Great American, O.Co, PNC, Safeco), that puts us over an entire point
You know, the more of these I run, the less I think Brandon Belt is an enigma and the more I appreciate him for doing exactly what I would expect him to do. Here he is on the road when Vegas projects the Giants to score 4 or more runs:
Brandon Belt is a VERY splitsy player, but going under the hood shows that his splits make sense based on his home ballpark. It will be interesting to see how Brandon Belt performs if he leaves San Francisco one day, but for now, we can deploy him in favorable situations and add value by doing so.
