It's Time To Talk About Fenway

Fenway Park is quite the odd beast. The Pesky Pole sits only 302 feet from home plate with about a four-foot high wall separating the fans from the field, and the Green Monster is, well, the Green Monster. The strange dimensions of Fenway have led to some memorable moments — Fisk waving it fair, Ortiz's incredible grand slam, etc. And now, we have Fenway to thank for possibly drastically changing the outcome of the ALDS.

That's right — Monday's Astros/Red Sox game might have gone very differently had the Red Sox played it in a more neutral park environment. Hell, Sunday's game could have gone differently too. How can we say this? We can look at the batted balls that Fenway turned into home runs and see how the game might have turned out differently.

The home run that sticks out the most to me as being a factor of Fenway is Andrew Benintendi's dinger off of Justin Verlander in the 5th inning of game four. Benintendi turns on a slider, drives it right down the foul line, and it lands just to the left of the Pesky Pole.

It goes without saying that almost nowhere else is this a home run. That ball had a 5% hit probability. Josh Reddick hit a ball with the exact same exit velocity and launch angle as Benintendi's dinger, but Betts caught it like a can of corn. In Statcast's history, there have been zero home runs with a launch angle of 35 degrees and an exit velocity of 88 MPH. You can probably count the number of home runs hit with an exit velocity of 88 MPH or less on two hands. But in the most crucial game of the season for the Sox, they got a gift from Fenway.

Another blessing from the Fenway deities was Rafael Dever's inside the park home run. Dever's batted ball had a hit probability of only 40%, so the odds were certainly against it from the start. Indeed, CF George Springer gets a great leap on this ball, until... DOINK! The ball ricochets off the wall and bounces into right field.

If this game were played in a more neutral park, Springer has plenty of room to grab that ball without worrying about running into the wall. But since this game was played in Fenway, Springer can't range fully over to make the catch and as a result, the Red Sox picked up a huge home run.

And even if Springer couldn't get his paws on the ball in our hypothetical situation, there's little that suggests that this would have been an inside the park home run elsewhere. The left-fielder rushes over to back up Springer, so if the ball doesn't ricochet off the wall like that, the dropped ball could be easily recovered.

And then there's Jackie Bradley Jr.'s silly home run. I mean... what happened here? Josh Reddick makes an awful play on this ball, juggling what should have been a routine fly — and throws it right into the stands.

Consider that the right-field wall in Fenway is the shortest in the MLB and that Fenway has little-to-no playable foul territory in right field. Few other ballparks in the MLB are situated so perfectly as to allow a fielder to juggle a baseball out of play and into the stands for a home run — the vast majority of outfield walls are at least over the fielders' heads.

Yes, Reddick bobbled the ball, so Bradley would have been safe anyways, and the game was already a blowout at this point. And Bradley's batted ball data on that hit favored it being a home run. But Reddick clearly could have made a play on it, or at least kept it in the yard.

One can only imagine the gods of Fenway desperately trying to save the Red Sox. Thanks to such gifts as Benintendi's long ball and Devers' inside-the-parker, the Sox almost forced a game five. It's interesting to think about what might have happened had the gods of Fenway granted the Red Sox another miracle...