Target Field RHH Opposite Field HRs

[greengoblinrulz]

Year 2, I believe in Sept, Jose Bautista went deep to RF & it was written that no Twin right handed hitters had gone opposite field for a HR in the first 2 yrs.

With Will Middlebrooks todays, has there been a Twin to do it??

Willy/Plouffe/Doumit are absolute pull hitters & still cannot think of a Twins player to do it.

[YourHouseIsMyHouse]

Bautista is a big time pull hitter too, so I'm surprised that he did.

[glanzer]

I distinctly remember Cuddyer hitting a HR to right field for the Twins at home. It seemed like nothing more than a routine pop fly off the bat but somehow it just kept carrying and carrying over the wall.

[Otto von Ballpark]

According to BB-Ref, Cuddy did it on April 21, 2010:

 

April 21, 2010 Cleveland Indians at Minnesota Twins Play by Play and Box Score - Baseball-Reference.com

[greengoblinrulz]

Wow.....is that it

Love to know the stats for Twins vs opp if anyone can find ir

[Otto von Ballpark]

I don't know if that's the only Twins one. It's Cuddyer's only one, I just scanned his HR logs.

 

You might have to be a Play Index subscriber to do any more advanced searches (like HR log for all players at Target Field).

[StormJH1]

Isn't there like FanGraphs search or something that could figure that out? I'm not good with that stuff, but it seems doable.

 

Now in Year 4, I really don't think of Target Field as a park that makes it THAT hard to hit HR's in. That's probably true to dead center and right-center, and the "rock baggy" in RF probably robs some hits that would be dingers in other parks. But it seems downright hitter-friendly to RH pull hitters, and I've seen enough non-descript LH's (including Escobar and Florimon) go yard at home this year to think that it can't be that hard to homer here, especially when it warms up a little.

 

I think so much of that was brought on by a combination of Mauer's sudden power "drop" (compared to the absurd year in 2009) and just how bad the overall team was in 2011. Nobody was really complaining about the dimensions in 2010 when Thome was hitting bomb after bomb. The Mauer thing might have been part psychological, too, but his road performance since 2010 has made it clear that he wouldn't be a 30 HR hitter in Fenway either. His average might be even higher than it is here, but that just isn't his approach.

 

Plus, Target Field doesn't exactly have an abundance of foul territory, which probably favors guys like Willingham who hits 4 foul balls down the LF line per at bat (and previously played in Oakland, which had the most foul territory, IIRC).