Colleague Jim P. came to us with a question last night: roughly speaking, had we noticed how much more Justin Morneau seems to rely these days on pulling the ball for his power. We really hadn't thought about it, but we knew just the place to look to see if Jim was imagining things or if there was something to it: Hit Tracker.

And, well, the results seem to back up what Jim was saying (and forgive us if others have noticed this and written about it already. This really is the first we've thought of it). Let's take a look at Morneau's HR distribution chart from 2006, his MVP season when he hit 34 home runs and batted .321 (note: something looks a little off-kilter as there appear to be more than 34 dots, but we're guessing some of those overlapping dots are really one home run. Regardless, there are a bunch to left).

The chart shows a pretty good number of home runs pulled to right for the lefty, but also a healthy number of shots to left-center and even left. That's kind of the Morneau we have in our mind -- the guy with power to all fields.

But here's his chart from 2009 (in 2010, by the way, both of his home runs have been pulled to right. Also, the 2009 chart is perfectly accurate with 30 dots for his 30 homers).

The vast majority of his home runs are now going right of center field -- all but 4 of his 30. Now: this should probably not be surprising because, as Jim Souhan noted a week ago, Morneau is constantly tinkering with his swing (or "tweaking," if you prefer). His pull power isn't even necessarily a bad thing: in 2007, when Morneau was still hitting a fair number to left and a bunch more to almost straightaway center, he hit .271 for the season with 31 HRs. In 2008, as he started to hit way more to right as an overall percentage, his HRs dipped to 23 but he still knocked in 129 runs and batted .300. In 2009, he hit 30 homers before being shelved down the stretch. He struck out a little more frequently in 2009 (once ever 6.86 plate appearances) than he did in his best overall year in 2006 (once ever 7.11 plate appearances), but that's hardly a huge difference and he's still never struck out 100 times in a season regardless of where his power is taking him.

His old approach might have left him more susceptible to getting busted inside, while his new power might take away some plate coverage. Then again, knowing Morneau, he might mix and match old and new during the course of a series, game or even at-bat to keep pitchers on their toes. That said, the graphs don't lie. As a power hitter, Morneau appears to be different now than he was earlier in his career.