If memory serves, Seals Stadium was a crap homerun park.

If memory serves, Seals Stadium was a crap homerun park.

It was neutral-to-pitcher-friendly for HRs, but distinctly pitcher-friendly for BA. Rather like Candlestick for most of its existence, actually.

The conventional analysis focuses only on Mays's HR totals, and generally concludes incorrectly that his parks hurt him in that regard. It ignores the fact that all three of Mays's primary parks (the Polo Grounds, Seals Stadium, and Candlestick -- and hell, Shea Stadium too, for that matter) distinctly hurt his BA.

Did I ever tell you about the time Willie Mays took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Willie takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half and sure enough someone constructs a bar around us. The day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Willie yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found em!'

Mays would have hit over 900 home runs if he hadn't been so proud. If he hit one that looked like it was going to be a cheapie, he'd go to the dugout, pick up his glove, jog out to the outfield, and then leap over the fence to catch the ball.

Mays also had a bit of a defensive 'trough' in his career, as he migrated stadiums mid-career. His 1959-61 numbers by Win Shares or BP's FRAA are medicore. I wonder if there was also adjustment going on there also.

In general, has anyone done a study that analyzes home-field advanatge for teams in their first year in a new park? I would bet it would be smaller, if the sample size were large enough.

"It ignores the fact that all three of Mays's primary parks ... distinctly hurt his BA."

Really? Are you joking? Here are Mays's career home-road splits:

Home batting average: .303
Road batting average: .304

Home on-base average: .389
Road on-base average: .383

Home slugging average: .569
Road slugging average: .558

Home OPS: .958
Road OPS: .941

Home home runs: 320
Road home runs: 316

On the basis of all of his career totals, it's hard to imagine there ever was a great player who was less affected by his home parks over the entire course of his career than Willie Mays was.

Really? Are you joking? Here are Mays's career home-road splits:

Considering the average player has generally hit about 10% better at home, those splits don't necessarily tell us what you think they do.

yeah maybe he would have hit .310 or something at home with less BA-suppressing places.

Really? Are you joking? Here are Mays's career home-road splits:

No, I'm not joking. Mays's individual numbers don't show it, but the fact is that all of Mays's home parks generally depressed BA. It's almost certainly the case that Mays would have displayed a higher career home BA (and thus a higher overall career BA) were it not for the very large foul territories in his home ballparks.

No, I'm not joking. Mays's individual numbers don't show it, but the fact is that all of Mays's home parks generally depressed BA. It's almost certainly the case that Mays would have displayed a higher career home BA (and thus a higher overall career BA) were it not for the very large foul territories in his home ballparks.

True, and park factors are again being used to show things they don't show.

These statements are not the same thing:

(1) Mays hit better at home than on the road.
(2) Mays's home park didn't hurt him.

Nor are these:

(1) Mays's park improved relative to the rest of the NL in permitting HRs after 1960.
(2) Mays's park didn't cost him HRs after 1960.

Nor are these:

(1) Candlestick was a decent HR park.
(2) The winds at Candlestick didn't really cost Mays HRs.

Etc.

Did I ever tell you about the time Willie Mays took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Willie takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half and sure enough someone constructs a bar around us. The day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Willie yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found em!'

I'm missing the reference, but this is a great story.

And if there is no reference, and it's actually a true story, then it's even better.

I'm missing the reference, but this is a great story

It sounds like a chunk of a Bill Brasky skit.

On the basis of all of his career totals, it's hard to imagine there ever was a great player who was less affected by his home parks over the entire course of his career than Willie Mays was.

Those look like they are all a bit less than the average Home field advantage

the average player has generally hit about 10% better at home

I didn't know the average player hit THAT MUCH better at home. Is that really the case? That means a .300 hitter on the road should hit .330 at home? Really?

the average player has generally hit about 10% better at home

I didn't know the average player hit THAT MUCH better at home. Is that really the case? That means a .300 hitter on the road should hit .330 at home? Really?

You can look it up in Retrosheet just as easily as anyone else, Rich. In 2009, for example, all MLB hitters had a line of 267/340/430 at home, and 258/326/407 on the road, for an OPS difference of .770 to .733. 10% exaggerates it, but it's surely 5%. It's definitely non-trivial.

EDIT: And when one thinks about it, this HAS to be the case, because we know that the home-field advantage exists in terms of team wins. Team wins don't occur in a vacuum; they're the result of differential performance by hitters and pitchers (and, presumably, fielders). What would be paradoxical would be for teams to demonstrate a home-field advantage without a corresponding statistical advantage exhibited by their players.

ballplayers don't sleep as well on the road.

ballplayers don't sleep as well on the road.

Hard to get your eight hours in when there are baseball annies to be, um, attended to. Just sayin'.

Hard to get your eight hours in when there are baseball annies to be, um, attended to. Just sayin'.

Having attractive, uninhibited women with good endurance in your home town is the new market inefficency. It's also good for the economy.

I didn't know the average player hit THAT MUCH better at home. Is that really the case? That means a .300 hitter on the road should hit .330 at home? Really?

I haven't looked at all seasons, but these numbers are for 2000-2008:

<u>Road</u>
PA: 663892
Outs: 454744
AVG: .262
OBP: .329
SLG: .418
OPS: .747
BR: 79349
BR/Out: 0.174
BR/27: 4.7

<u>Home</u>
PA: 638703
Outs: 428972
AVG: .270
OBP: .341
SLG: .434
OPS: .775
BR: 82274
BR/Out: 0.192
BR/27: 5.2

BR are context-neutral batting runs using linear weights based on the component stats. BR/27 are just the run value per 27 outs.

I probably shouldn't say that there's definitively a 10% advantage based on only this subset, but there is almost certainly a non-trivial advantage. It could be due to external factors like better rest, greater familiarity with the batter's eye, tailoring your game to suit the dimensions of your park, or a whole bunch of other stuff.

So if you see a player who hit as well at home as he did on the road, there's a very good chance he was hurt by his home park.

It could be due to external factors like better rest, greater familiarity with the batter's eye, tailoring your game to suit the dimensions of your park, or a whole bunch of other stuff.

And I'm sure that the support of the home crowd matters a lot. Human beings are social animals; we respond positively to gestures of emotional support from our "clan," and are unnerved by gestures of negativity directed against us. We're wired that way. Pro ballplayers are obviously trained and selected for their great powers of concentration, but they aren't machines, they're people. Cheering matters, in every sport.

The "home field advantage" has been demonstrated in many experiments (always pretty artificial as any social psych experiment is) as well as existing in (almost?) every sport.

But it's not necessarily emotional support, etc. Most of the experiments are 1-on-1 engagements without crowds involved. One I recall had two students negotiate something with half randomly assigned to meet in one student's dorm room and the other pairs randomly assigned to meet in a neutral setting. The students who enjoyed the HFA did better than those who negotiated in a neutral setting. (Like I said, artificial) I'd imagine these sorts of things go on all the time in corporate and legal negotiations and that you always try to get the negotiation to take place on your turf, not theirs.

I probably shouldn't say that there's definitively a 10% advantage based on only this subset, but there is almost certainly a non-trivial advantage.

Your numbers suggest there was (for batting average) a 3% home park advantage. That is substantially different from the 10% claim made above.

I wonder if great, HOF-caliber players have more or less of an advantage at home compared with your run-of-the-mill major league hitters. My cursory search of Willie Mays's comp hitters suggest HOFers tend to have MORE of a home field advantage than 3 percent*. So if that is true, then the fact that Mays hit roughly the same at home as he did on the road suggests that Steve Treder's claim is even more true (than I had thought).

And if it is true that the best hitters have a relatively greater advantage at home than the non-greats, I have two potential hypotheses:

1) the greats are (in a baseball sense) smarter. That is, they apply their higher baseball IQs to take advantage of the unique features they find in their home parks, because with so much time in their home parks, they learn these features that dumber hitters don't see; or

2) their parks were coincidentally suited to their style of hitting, and thus part of their greatness was itself due to the special fit between the great hitters and their home parks. For the minority of greats like Mays, who did not hit better at home, they would have been even greater if they had the luck of having home parks which better fit their talents.

*Ted Williams is an interesting case. I only know his splits at the end of his career. He was a much better hitter for average at Fenway. But like most (all?) left-handed hitters there, he lost home runs in that home park.

Your numbers suggest there was (for batting average) a 3% home park advantage. That is substantially different from the 10% claim made above.

The 10% refers to the total difference in offense (in terms of rate of runs per outs), not batting average. I generally don't think in terms of batting average, which was probably not right in the context of this thread.

The 10% refers to the total difference in offense (in terms of rate of runs per outs), not batting average.

And BA, of course, not only is but a component of total offense (and a multiplicative one, in that an increase of x% in BA and x% in HR will, other things being equal, yield an increase of greater than x% in total offense), but also varies differently than other components. The swing in BA from a park such as the Polo Grounds or Candlestick in comparison to that of the league average was greater than that of the swing in total offense between those parks and the league average, as both were pretty good (Candlestick) or great (Polo Grounds) for HRs, but nothing special for total runs, meaning they had to have been pretty bad (Candlestick) or terrible (Polo Grounds) for the other kind of hits that produce BA.

The swing in BA from a park such as the Polo Grounds or Candlestick in comparison to that of the league average was greater than that of the swing in total offense between those parks and the league average, as both were pretty good (Candlestick) or great (Polo Grounds) for HRs, but nothing special for total runs, meaning they had to have been pretty bad (Candlestick) or terrible (Polo Grounds) for the other kind of hits that produce BA.

Contrariwise, Pac Bell is horrible for HR, but very good for BABIP.

The 10% refers to the total difference in offense (in terms of rate of runs per outs), not batting average.

And BA, of course, not only is but a component of total offense

Well, yeah, sure. But this started with Rich responding to Steve's comment about Mays' home parks specifically suppressing BA. I can see why he took "hit about 10% better" to mean "had a BA about 10% higher." The interesting thing to my introspective self is that I didn't take it to mean that, even in the context of this thread.

Contrariwise, Pac Bell is horrible for HR, but very good for BABIP.

Yep, and to make matters even more complicated, Pac Bell isn't bad at all as a HR park for RHB, but is positively wretched as a HR park for LHB.

Which not only makes Barry Bonds's HR feats of the 2000s all the more amazing, but it also screams out the question: what in the world was the Giants' brass thinking when they authorized the park to be built as it was, given that Bonds was their franchise superduperstar?

I do clearly recall that the expectation at the time was that the 309-foot RF foul line was going to make the place a House that Bonds Built for LHB HRs -- they anticipated about a hundredfold more splash hits than the place has yielded -- and so the hugely high RF wall was put up to counteract it, as well as the cavernous 421-foot distance to center-right-center. They couldn't have been more wrong in their expectations; it's a wonderful place to watch a ballgame, but a disastrous place to try and hit home runs if you're a LHB.

The swing in BA from a park such as the Polo Grounds or Candlestick in comparison to that of the league average was greater than that of the swing in total offense between those parks and the league average, as both were pretty good (Candlestick) or great (Polo Grounds) for HRs, but nothing special for total runs, meaning they had to have been pretty bad (Candlestick) or terrible (Polo Grounds) for the other kind of hits that produce BA.




A place like Coors Field has so much outfield acreage that even without the air, you can see why it is such a great hitters' park. I wonder what the acreage of the Polo Grounds was, with its huge CF and tiny LF/RF. If it was relatively small that might explain the dearth of non-HR hits.

Candlestick had the bad weather; I wonder if that meant OFs could play relatively closer to the infield and have to cover less territory. That wouldn't explain the HRs though.

it also screams out the question: what in the world was the Giants' brass thinking when they authorized the park to be built as it was, given that Bonds was their franchise superduperstar?

I'm not one who says, "defense wins championships" or "pitching wins championships," etc. A great offensive club with okay pitching can win and vice versa. However, it seems to me that one of the great risk factors in baseball is pitcher health. And insofar as that is true, I would think an organization would want a ballpark which suppresses offense. Does that make any sense? (I concede I have no idea if pitcher health is affected by park factors.)

At the same time, there is a countervailing force. Chicks love the long ball. If every game at home is low-scoring, the game is less exciting to a lot of fans who want more offense. So because of that, teams have an incentive to build a bandbox.

I guess, then, they try to find a balance. But in the last 20 years of new park construction, very few (Safeco, Comerica at first, Petco) have erred on the side of pitchers.

I would think an organization would want a ballpark which suppresses offense. Does that make any sense?

It makes complete sense to me. I've stoutly maintained this for decades: it's to a team's long-term advantage to play in a pitchers' park, simply because it relieves stress on the arms of its pitchers. Fewer pitches, fewer pitches from the stretch, etc.

One of my non-provable hypotheses is that a small but non-trivial factor explaining the long domination of the AL by the Yankees as compared to the Red Sox is the fact that Yankee Stadium consistently played as a slight pitchers' park, while Fenway of course played as a strong hitters' park.

A secondary component of the hypothesis is that since Yankee favored LHBs, the team always stocked up on them, while since Fenway favored RHBs, that team always stocked up on them. Other performance considerations aside, as a group LHBs hit into signficantly fewer DPs, and moreover it's generally easier for a runner on first to get to third on a single by a LHB than a single by a RHB. Small factors add up over years and decades.

I do clearly recall that the expectation at the time was that the 309-foot RF foul line was going to make the place a House that Bonds Built for LHB HRs -- they anticipated about a hundredfold more splash hits than the place has yielded -- and so the hugely high RF wall was put up to counteract it, as well as the cavernous 421-foot distance to center-right-center. They couldn't have been more wrong in their expectations; it's a wonderful place to watch a ballgame, but a disastrous place to try and hit home runs if you're a LHB.

Their biggest miscalculation was the wind.

But, even if the park had played as they expected, it would have probably been a losing proposition overall. Bonds never hit a lot of cheap fly balls down the line, ala Johnny Damon at NYS. Even if he was picking up some extra cheapies there, I think it would still have been offset by the HRs lost to the power alley.

Bonds never hit a lot of cheap fly balls down the line, ala Johnny Damon at NYS.

Damon did not hit a lot of cheap fly balls down the line in NYS. Which, in keeping with one theme of the thread, is not to say that the park did not boost his HR total.

IOW, the 314 feet to the fair pole is not the issue at NYS.

The Giants had to squeeze the park into the available space, which was very tight down the RF line. They had to get a waiver from the league office because the proposed distance down the line was short of the major league minimum. Not sure of the rationale behind the otherwise huge outfield, they may have been trying to make up for the short distance down the line.

IOW, the 314 feet to the fair pole is not the issue at NYS.

Correct. They straightened the wall in RCF for a scoerboard, which had the effect of making in some 10 ft. closer in the gap.

My cursory search of Willie Mays's comp hitters suggest HOFers tend to have MORE of a home field advantage than 3 percent*

Maybe part of the reason we think they are great is because they had more of a home-field advantage than the average player.


what in the world was the Giants' brass thinking when they authorized the park to be built as it was, given that Bonds was their franchise superduperstar?

Since he's the only one could hit them out there, didn't they gain a huge advantage? If the wall was 200 feet away, Bonds ain't no better than Marvin Benard.

what in the world was the Giants' brass thinking when they authorized the park to be built as it was, given that Bonds was their franchise superduperstar?

From what I remember of the time, they thought they were building a hitter's park. Which, as it turns out, they have. It just took a few years to get there, and it's a hitter's park in a weird way that makes the hitter feel like they're getting jobbed.

Mays had speed, but nothing like Cobb or dare we say Larry Lintz. Check out interesting and diverse articles on Ty Cobb and Larry Lintz at Pastime Post.

How much of Cobb's speed was just willingness to disembowel the defender with his sharpened spikes?

ESPN, after the end of the 2001 season, put together clips of all 73 of Bonds' home runs into one big ol' clip. I looked at that several times, and concluded that Bonds, that year only, was getting a lot of extra homers hitting the ball right down the right field line, which is where I believe McCovey Cove is. I was looking for that because, before the 2001 season, the Lords had told the umpires to start enforcing the strike zone as written, which essentially meant calling a bunch of high (letters to shoulders) strikes that hadn't been called before. Since Barry had tremendous strike zone judgment (one of his skills that just cannot be attributed to steroids), I theorized that perhaps he had never swung at a shoulder-high inside pitch before, because it wasn't a strike. In 2001, he had to, and found out that he had a sweet spot he'd never found before. IMO, that has a lot more to do with Barry's increase in home run rates from 2001 on than steroids did. It allowed him to exploit the one part of his ballpark - right down the line - that favored LHB homers. Sort of like Roger Maris exploiting the same feature in Yankee in 1961 (or so I've heard; I've never seen a clip of all 61 of Roger's taters), following the lead of Bill Dickey. Or like Mel Ott in the Polo Grounds.

BTW, it should be possible to check to see if home park illusions influence HoF votes. Check the WORST players in the HoF and see if they have higher park effects than the BEST do The best guys were going into the Hall no matter what the ballpark tried, but the likes of Fenway can make the likes of Jim Rice look a lot better to sportswriters (and to veterans who have forgotten the effects) than they actually were.

I got to watch the last half of Willie Mays' career, and my memory of his speed is much like my memory of Joe Morgan. Willie and Joe were very fast, but not blindingly fast. However, they were both really really bright, and THOUGHT just as fast as they ran, so they looked like they had more speed than they had, because you got to see the results, rather than the start. Willie got a lot of great jumps on both fly balls and pitcher motions. - Brock Hanke

Ty Cobb could have spammed every BBTF article if he felt like it.

Sort of like Roger Maris exploiting the same feature in Yankee in 1961 (or so I've heard; I've never seen a clip of all 61 of Roger's taters)

Well, I don't know. Maris in 1961 hit 31 of his 61 homers on the road. Bonds in 2001 hit 36 of his 73 homers on the road. Neither record would seem to be a particular function of a home field short porch.

Brock,
Several of the worst HOF guys (Lindstrom, Bottomley, Hafey, Traynor, and Wilson) have very high AIR factors, though era is probably a bigger factor than park, and there are exceptions like Youngs and Kell who played in more average context. If someone wants to do a probit model with park factor in it, it would be interesting.

A place like Coors Field has so much outfield acreage that even without the air, you can see why it is such a great hitters' park.

Yet Petrco also has a huge OF, but is a terrible hitter's park.

Josh1 - Thanks for the info. It makes sense. The weak guys have either hitter-friendly ballparks or a hitter-friendly era or both. And it doesn't apply to absolutely everyone, which the voting record of the HoF would not support. They're not that consistent.

Steve - You have a good point, but both players' personal splits will drive you nuts, so I ended up going with rep and observation. Maris, of course, has only the two really big years in NY, so his splits have sample size issues. Bonds' splits for the "big steroids years" of 2001 - 2004 go 37/36, 19/27, 23/22, and 26/19 (if I read BB-Ref right), all in the same ballpark. Makes no sense at all, so I go with what I think I saw. You may very well look at the same clip (it has to be out there somewhere) and come to a completely different conclusion than I did. Such is the nature of the steroids accusations. Ya can't prove anything except that some players took steroids some years, it's gone back to at least the 1960s, and there are lots more users out there than we know about. Whether or not the steroids actually did anyone any good is a different question. Tom House, who is the earliest steroid user to confess that I know of, said that his fastball stayed completely level on the radar gun before, during, and after steroids. That's the BEST evidence out there, since it was actually measured by a machine. But still, as evidence goes, it's nothing. - Brock

Maris in 1961 (especially) had a swing that hit flyballs 370-400' (total guesswork) to straightaway right. I happened to see 3 Maris HR that yr at the Stadium. First one was a real cheapie, off Camilo Pascual, a loopy fly/soft liner to the RF foul pole about 2' above the fence. The other two came in the same July ballgame (pitcher disremembered) and could've been twins. Each landed 1st row upper deck, with "normal" FB trajectory, probably at the upper end of the distance range I guessed above. In any case, 370' to straightaway RF reaches the seats in nearly every ballpark, and did so in 1961. Less a ballpark factor than a well dialed-in swing that year.

The weak guys have either hitter-friendly ballparks or a hitter-friendly era or both.

and the people who voted for those guys didn't make adjustments for that- and I daresay, wouldn't even if the problem was pointed out to them- they would simply deny it. I recall reading many a letter (to baseball digest) and even articles asserting that the higher batting averages in the 20s and 30s was proof that hitters were better back then- they would simply deny it.

Less a ballpark factor than a well dialed-in swing that year.

Back in 1997, Tino Martinez hit 44 homers, huge first half, I saw at least 15 of them, and everyone I swear cleared the fence by just 6 inches- he was terrific in the HR derby that year too- but nary a tape measure in sight.

Maris in 1961 (especially) had a swing that hit flyballs 370-400' (total guesswork) to straightaway right. I happened to see 3 Maris HR that yr at the Stadium. First one was a real cheapie, off Camilo Pascual, a loopy fly/soft liner to the RF foul pole about 2' above the fence. The other two came in the same July ballgame (pitcher disremembered) and could've been twins. Each landed 1st row upper deck, with "normal" FB trajectory, probably at the upper end of the distance range I guessed above. In any case, 370' to straightaway RF reaches the seats in nearly every ballpark, and did so in 1961. Less a ballpark factor than a well dialed-in swing that year.

That's really what it was, a well-dialed in swing. I saw Maris hit eight home runs in person that year, four in Yankee Stadium (all in one doubleheader) and four in Griffith Stadium (one each in a four game series). Griffith Stadium had a 30 ft. high wall in right field, 320' down the right field line but at an angle that quickly made it a 373' power alley and a 420' distance to center, all with that same 30' wall. All of Maris's home runs there were hit over that wall. Only four other visiting left handed batters cleared that wall the entire year, and the the most hit by any Senators' LH batter was six. All of those home runs would have been home runs in any park, with the possible exception of one that might have not cleared the Yankee Stadium bleacher wall in right center.

The four in Yankee Stadium were more of a mixed bag. Two were hit into the lower RF stands, one right at the foul line and one in the power alley. The other two were both into the bleachers, each over 400'. The real question is how many long outs Maris had in right center as opposed to how many home runs barely made it into the lower deck. No way of knowing that without looking at all of the game writeups.

Well, for me, the true beauty of baseball is the watching of the game being played by those few ballplayers who truly excell and understand how the game is played.
And nobody did that better that Willie.
We didn't have a Wille Mays in Pittsburgh but we had an excellent "little Wille" in Roberto Clemente. Both players had tremendous respect for one another's skills and abilities.
When the Giants came to town the sportscasters would regularly interview Mays and he was always complimentary to Clemente whenever the subject turned to the local team and its chances against the Giants.
Wille was the greatest all around player I had the privelege to see first hand.
Everything was done full speed but a seemingly effortless full speed if you know what I mean.
Long live Willie Mays!