$Unique_ID{BAS01210} $Title{Home Road Statistics: Introduction} $Author{} $Subject{Home Road Statistics Introduction} $Log{} Total Baseball: Registers, Leaders, and Rosters Home Road Statistics: Introduction This section consists of two parts, each illustrating the powerful effects a ballpark can have on batting and pitching performance. (Parks affect fielding and baserunning as well, but to a far lesser degree.) The first component is a summary of the won-lost records and run-scoring characteristics of every park for all years of the four most significant major leagues--the American and National leagues and the American and National associations. The second is a breakdown of the home-road records for all teams in all leagues since 1871; detailed here are the won-lost records, runs scored and allowed; home runs hit and allowed; and a variety of hitting and pitching factors that are helpful for evaluation of a team and, by extension, its players. What is the definition of success at home and on the road? Every team is expected to win more games at home than it does on the road, to the extent that if it only breaks even on the road it is thought to have a shot at the pennant. No matter whether its home park favors hitters or pitchers, a home team should be able to take advantage of the park's peculiarities better than the visiting team can. The Houston Astros may score fewer (and the Boston Red Sox more) runs at home than they do on the road, but their differential between runs scored and runs allowed will be greater than their run differential on the road. Greater run differential means more wins. Almost anybody, it seems, can play .500 ball at home (in the NL of 1983, for example, only one team had a losing record on its own turf). This is somewhat deceptive, for while .500 is the average of all games played, and a team that goes 81-81 is thus defined as average, .500 is not the average at home nor, for that matter, away. The table below, which gives the home park won-lost records of all major leagues since 1900, shows the home average to be .543. The inverse, .457, is the average road record in this century. If the average home winning percentage is .543, then an average team (8181) should be expected to go 44-37 at home and 37-44 on the road. Until 1987, only four teams with road records that were below average--that is, 37-44--ever won the pennant, and none went on to win the World Series. Then the Minnesota Twins took the American League flag with a regular-season road mark of 29-52, by far the worst ever for a pennant or division winner, and then proceeded to lose all three World Series road games while winning all four at home. We are not likely to see such a performance again. Just as runs scored and runs allowed may predict won-lost records, as discussed in the Introduction to the Annual Record, so we can move backward from won-lost records (the actual home-park norm of 44-37, which is between 5 and 10 percent better than the theoretical norm of 41-40) to examine runs scored and runs allowed. Runs (and home runs) per inning at home are indeed accumulated at a rate per inning about 10 percent higher than on the road, but the game and season totals presented in this section fall short of that mark. The reason: since the number of innings played at home is about 5 percent lower than on the road (leading home teams do not bat in the bottom half of final innings), total runs and homers are in actuality only about 5 percent higher. Detailed technical information about the formulas and calculations behind Park Factor, as applied to teams as well as individuals, will be found in the Glossary. For the general reader, suffice it to say that all factors and ratings related to home-park effects are calculated by comparing runs scored and allowed per inning at home to runs scored and allowed per inning on the road. The same holds true for home runs. Adjustments such as the Run Rating for Batters (RB) and the Home Run rating for Batters (HRB) are made to team measures of batting strength to take into account the fact that a team's batters do not have to face its own pitchers. Innings are estimated from the number of games and games won (leading home teams not batting in the final inning). For additional useful information about home-road differences, we refer the reader to the Annual Record and the Glossary. For a key to the team and league abbreviations used throughout this section, flip to the last pages of this volume. Other abbreviations follow. TM Team LG League W Wins L Losses T Ties R Runs OR Opponents' Runs HR Home Runs OHR Opponents' Home Runs HRF Home Run Factor (A measure of the home runs hit in a given ballpark, with 100 representing the average home park and the highest figure above that representing the best home-run park.) HRB Home Run Batter Rating (A measure of a team's home-run ability, taking into account the HRF and the fact that its batters do not face its own pitchers, with 100 representing the average and the highest figure above that representing the best.) HRP Home Run Pitcher Rating (A measure of a team's ability to prevent home runs, taking into account the HRF and the fact that its pitchers do not face its own batters, with 100 representing the average and the lowest figure beneath that representing the best.) RF Run Factor (A measure of the runs scored in a given ballpark compared to other ballparks, with 100 representing the average home park and the highest figure above that representing the best hitters' park.) RB Run Rating for Batters (A measure of a team's run-scoring ability, taking into account the HRF and the fact that its batters do not face its own pitchers, with 100 representing the average and the highest figure above that representing the best.) RP Run Rating for Pitchers (A measure of a team's run-prevention ability, taking into account the HRF and the fact that its pitchers do not face its own batters, with 100 representing the average and the lowest figure beneath that representing the best.) BPF Batting Park Factor (Equivalent to the Park Factor shown in the batters' section of the team statistics in the Annual Record; above 100 means batters benefited from playing half their games in a good hitting park.) PPF Pitching Park Factor (Equivalent to the Park Factor shown in the pitchers' section of the team statistics in the Annual Record; above 100 means a pitcher was hurt by playing half his games in a good hitting park.) Individual Home-Road Stats In the next several pages are presented home-road statistical breakdowns for twenty-seven hitters of note: twelve from the National League--Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Chuck Klein, Willie Mays, Joe Morgan, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, and Honus Wagner, and fifteen from principally the American League--Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Sam Crawford, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Reggie Jackson, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Nap Lajoie, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Ted Williams, and Carl Yastrzemski. These were researched from the official day-by-day records, box scores, schedules, and other sources. Until now, the only home-road information that has been available for most NL players is in the category of home runs. Analysts and would-be analysts have been left to make guesses about NL park effects or to pretend that they don't exist. If a writer claimed that Rogers Hornsby, Mel Ott, and Hank Aaron had inflated statistics because of the home parks they played in, or that the stats of Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, and Joe Morgan suffered deeply for the same reason, the reader would have no reason to disbelieve him, nor any evidence with which to challenge him. Now that the evidence is available, perhaps such ignorant speculation can be averted. Home-road data for AL players is more familiar because Peter Palmer had made it public in various publications in the 1980s. There are a few things to understand before home-road breakdowns can be properly analyzed. First of all, the average player does better at home regardless of the park. This phenomenon is addressed in The Hidden Game of Baseball (1984): "The players benefit from home stands of reasonable duration . . . when they live in their own residences, sleep at more nearly regular times, play before appreciative fans, and benefit from the physical park conditions which to some degree may have made their organizations acquire them in the first place." It is concluded there that "individuals bat and pitch at a rate 10 percent higher at home, on average." Second, let's not overrate "hitters' parks," or assume that their effect is the same for every hitter. Parks don't make the statistics by themselves; a player still has to hit the ball and should be given some credit for learning to take advantage of a park. Nevertheless a truly great hitter should be able to hit anywhere. Third, most players accumulate more times at bat on the road (about 5 percent more throughout an average career) because the road team always bats in the ninth inning, while the home team often doesn't. Variations in the 5 percent result from the team's won-lost record and home park. Over a career, this can add up to several hundred more at-bats on the road than at home, with other totals increased correspondingly. One final note, regarding on base percentage (OBP). The official formula for on base percentage, adopted in 1984, is hits plus walks plus hit batsmen, divided by at-bats plus walks plus hit batsmen plus sacrifice flies: OBP = [H + BB + HB] / [AB + BB + HB + SF] Since sacrifice flies have not been recorded consistently throughout history (and their effect on OBP is small), SF was eliminated from the formula for the breakdowns offered here. In cases where hit-by-pitch data was not available (pre-1917), that too was eliminated from the formula. Where walks are not available for a season, the OBP is not listed. Statistics A valuable measure of park effect is the ratio of Production (on base plus slugging) at home to Production on the road. Normally, a player will have a batting average, slugging average and on base percentage each about 5 percent higher at home than on the road. Thus a home-park advantage of 5 percent is to be expected of all batters. Unfortunately, the variation due to chance in a single season for the difference between Production at home and on the road is 10 percent, so single seasons can vary quite a bit. However, over a ten-year period, the average difference gets down to about 3 percent. This means that if a player played in a truly neutral park, his Production over ten years at home should be at 5 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, about half the time. Still, one player in twenty would be expected to be off by 10 percent in a neutral park after ten years. The data on the 27 players in this sample show most players near the average. The player with the biggest home park advantage was a National Leaguer, Chuck Klein ( 1.27), while the one with the worst disadvantage was Joe DiMaggio (0.92). Comments on the NL'ers The NL statisticians have been, for the most part, extremely accurate in recording stats over the past seventy years (particularly when we consider the process wasn't computerized until 1981). A few minor recording or tabulation errors were found in the official sheets for Hornsby (1 extra HR), Klein (1 missing RBI), Ott (1 missing RBI, 2 extra games), and Howard (7 extra games, 1 missing run); the totals for Musial, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Rose, Morgan, Robinson, and Schmidt balanced perfectly. (Those of us who feared an audit of Clemente's record might turn up a bogus hit among his 3,000 can now rest easier.) Before the mid-teens, it was a different story: record keeping was sloppy and incomplete. Consequently, in compiling Honus Wagner's records, more than 30 discrepancies in 12 different seasons were unearthed. In most cases it is impossible to determine whether the error is in the official sheets, the published record, or both. The net effect is that Wagner's home-road breakdowns, compared with the "official" published record, credit him with 10 more games, 12 more at-bats, 5 fewer runs, 15 fewer hits, and 11 fewer doubles. In the following player comments, there will be references to home and road "records." These are based only on the eleven "pure" NL'ers--not Frank Robinson--although most of the records would probably survive any further research. Hank Aaron Critics are fond of saying things like "Sure, he got the home run record, but he played in that band box in Atlanta . . . " Rarely is it mentioned that Aaron spent the bulk of his career (fourteen of twenty-three seasons) in Milwaukee, a poor hitter's park, and never played a game in Atlanta until he was thirty-two. In Aaron's Milwaukee seasons, he had 195 homers, 636 RBIs, and a .305 average at home, but 225 homers, 764 RBIs, and a .318 mark on the road. He holds the major league road records for career total bases, home runs, and runs batted in. The following statistical line compares well with the career records of many Hall of Famers. G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB AVG OBP SLG ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1650 6392 1094 1959 342 61 370 1180 123 .306 .372 .553 Those are Hank Aaron's career stats for road games only. Roberto Clemente When one looks only at his home-road home run breakdown (102-138), it is easy to hypothesize that Forbes Field hurt Clemente's offensive production. Actually he did better at home in virtually every category except home runs, including a 23-point spread (.329-.306) in batting average. Roberto hit better than .300 at home in each of his last fourteen seasons. Curious stat: In 1956-1957, he went 60 straight road games (more than 250 at bats) without drawing a walk. Rogers Hornsby Bill James, in his Historical Abstract, said that somehow he doesn't think that Hornsby was the best offensive second baseman ever, even though his statistics indicate he was. He "played 85 percent of his career in the best two hitter's parks in the National League," James reasoned, ranking him only fourth all-time among second sackers. "I think it is likely that Hornsby benefited from a fairly large home-park advantage." Reasonable, perhaps, but wrong. Hornsby did have two straight monster years at Sportsman's Park in 1924-1925, posting combined averages of .473 (batting), .552 (on-base), and .841 (slugging). But now let's examine his road performance. Rogers Hornsby batted .358 lifetime on the road. Three-five-eight. He holds the NL road records for highest batting average in a season (.419 in 1921) and for a career. He holds the NL road records for highest on-base average in a season (.505 in 1928) and for a career (.430). He has a higher career road slugging average (.565) than Musial, Mays, Aaron, or any of the other National Leaguers checked. Chuck Klein He has long been accused of taking advantage of Philadelphia's Baker Bowl, with its 280 1/2-foot right field foul line, to achieve Hall of Fame statistics. Klein stormed into the majors with 5 1/2 spectacular seasons (1928-1933), batting .359 with four home run titles and a Triple Crown. He was then traded to the Cubs, returning to the Phils in 1936, two years before they vacated the Bowl. Klein's stats took a plunge in 1934 and never recovered, but the numbers in those first 5 1/2 seasons were so overwhelming that they finally carried him into Cooperstown. This time Bill James rushes to the defense of Klein: "You just can't ignore that much statistical evidence . . . I've become convinced that Klein was significantly over . . . the level of unquestioned excellence but marginal greatness." James ranked Klein as one of history's top ten right fielders in "peak value." In reality Chuck Klein was a slightly above average hitter for whom Baker Bowl was tailor-made. Look at the breakdown for those first 5 1/2 seasons: PLACE G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG --------------------------------------------------------------- Home 408 1,695 417 715 139 24 131 469 .422 .470 .764 Road 415 1,672 282 494 107 26 60 258 .295 .354 .498 The seasonal breakdowns are just as staggering. In consecutive seasons Klein achieved the top five home hit totals in NL history, with a high of 143. He set NL home records for runs (92), doubles (32), total bases (270), and RBI (109) in a season. Even when he set a modern fielding record, with 44 outfield assists (1930), 32 of them were homemade. And before you think that Klein's road numbers aren't too shabby either, consider that the overall league batting average for those years was .283. After he went to Chicago (not a bad park either), the bottom fell out of Klein's home stats, but his road records improved--largely because he now had Baker Bowl as a road park. In 24 road games there (1934-1936), Klein hit 8 homers, drove in 25 runs, scored 28, and had a .445 OBP. Klein's career statistics in 578 games at Baker Bowl include 164 home runs, 594 RBIs, (154-game averages: 44, 158), a .397 batting average, and a .708 slugging mark. In 1,175 games at other NL parks, he had 136 home runs, 608 RBIs (averages: 18, 80), and a .277 batting average, which is about what the league average was at that time. Yes, Klein still had to hit and throw the ball himself. But why couldn't he do it anywhere else? Willie Mays If Candlestick Park hurt Mays, it doesn't show up in the stats. He had a .549 career slugging percentage on the road, .567 at home. He hit 325 homers on the road, 335 (in 400 fewer at-bats) at home. Joe Morgan Looking at his career statistics, it's easy to conclude that Morgan's sudden rise from a pretty good player to a superstar, following his trade from Houston to Cincinnati, was due to his escape from the Astrodome. But the home-road breakdowns tell a different story. In his ten years with Houston, Morgan batted. 272 with a .401 OBP at home, but only .250 with a .351 OBP on the road. Only his home run production suffered. In his eight years with Cincinnati, he hit .282 at home (a 10-point increase), but .294 on the road (a 44-point gain!), and he still hit more homers on the road. It is quite clear that Morgan's metamorphosis had more to do with finally playing for a perennial contender than with changing home parks. Maybe Pete Rose really does bring out the best in his teammates. Stan Musial Sportsman's Park did not hurt his numbers any, but Stan could hit anywhere. His best season, 1948, was also probably the best road season in NL history, setting records for hits (132), total bases (248), doubles (29), and slugging (.780). Musial collected 1,815 career hits at home and 1,815 on the road. Mel Ott One looking at Ott's home run breakdown is liable to think that the Polo Grounds (257-foot foul line in right) kept him in the major leagues. He hit a startling 323 of his 511 career home runs at home, and another 40 (in about 110 games) in friendly Baker Bowl. In Ott's last seven seasons, 100 of his 123 homers (including all 18 in 1943) were hit at home. Additionally, this analysis showed that Ott slugged .589 at home and only .370 on the road during this period, and that he didn't score a run in his last 37 road games. The Polo Grounds may have extended Ott's career, and turned him into a world-class home run hitter, but he was a world-class hitter all by himself. Over his first nine seasons, Ott batted a resounding .343 on the road, as compared to .286 at home. In 1929 he set NL records for runs (79) and RBIs (87) on the road. For his career he batted 14 points better on the road and hit significantly more singles, doubles, and triples away from home. It is interesting to note that Ott's record at home and away can be viewed as essentially the same, except that about 130 doubles on the road were turned into homers by the short dimensions of the Polo Grounds. His overall home-park advantage, as measured by Production at home divided by Production on the road, is about average (1.07). This is a phenomenon that also applied to Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra in Yankee Stadium, and shows that some parks aren't as easy as they appear. Pete Rose He holds the NL career records in runs, hits, and doubles, both at home and on the road. Mike Schmidt He has hit most of his home runs on the road but has been, overall, a better hitter at home. Honus Wagner He was homerless at Pittsburgh in seven of eighteen seasons with the Pirates, and during that period hit only 29 of his 82 homers at home. Comments on the AL'ers American League figures are more nearly "normal" than those of the NL. Tris Speaker (1.14), Jimmie Foxx (1.16), and Carl Yastrzemski (1.16) had slight home-park advantages, while Reggie Jackson (0.96) was at a disadvantage. The strangest case was certainly Gehrig (0.96). Lou Gehrig While Jackson played most of his years in a known "pitchers' park" in Oakland, Gehrig played his entire career in Yankee Stadium, which is supposed to be easy for lefthanded batters (in fact, it is generally neutral for them). His road data is amazing. His .805 slugging average in 1927 is the top road mark of all time, and his .794 in 1930 is second. His 247 total bases for each of these seasons is an AL record, as are his 36 doubles in 1927. But the runs batted in data is the most startling: 117 RBIs in 1930 stands not only as the road record, but is higher than anyone had in a home season as well. The next best road marks? His 98 in 1927 and again in 1931. Gehrig was better away from Yankee Stadium over his career, but in 1934 he had one of the great home records of all time: a batting average of .414 with 98 RBIs. Babe Ruth Another amazing stat is the tremendous batting of Babe Ruth as a member of the Boston Red Sox while visiting the Yankees, who played their home games at the Polo Grounds before moving to Yankee Stadium in 1923. Called "the house that Ruth built," Yankee Stadium was by no means the house that built Ruth. His home slugging marks of .985 (201 total bases in 204 at bats) in 1920 and .929 in 1921 have never been approached, even by Chuck Klein; Jimmie Foxx's .887 in Fenway Park in 1938 is the closest. When Babe hit 29 homers in 1919 for the Red Sox, he had 20 on the road. Fenway Park in those years was a very difficult park for hitters. In fact, there were only 13 homers hit there all year by the Red Sox and their visitors, and Ruth had 9 of them. It would have been easy to predict Ruth would hit at least 50 in 1920 (he had 54), as he had 4 in 10 games in the Polo Grounds in 1919. All told, of his 49 homers with the Red Sox. 38 came on the road. Tris Speaker The Gray Eagle played his Cleveland years in League Park, which was a very easy park for lefthanders. The right field foul line was only 290 feet and the park went directly at right angles to center, so the power alley was only 340 feet. As a member of the Tribe, Speaker had 306 doubles at home and only 179 on the road. Ted Williams Fenway Park is generally regarded as a righthanded hitter's idea of heaven, but in truth it benefits all batters, just as Wrigley Field and Fulton County Stadium are batters' favorite road stops in the NL. In 1941 Williams of course hit .406 for the season to post a landmark batting average--but at Fenway he terrorized pitchers for an on base percentage of .541! Joe DiMaggio Just as Williams was thought to have suffered for his home park, so did baseball pundits regard DiMaggio's stay at Yankee Stadium, with its cavernous power alleys and distant left field. What if, writers and fans were fond of asking, the Yanks and Red Sox made a whopper of a deal, permitting DiMaggio to attack the Green Monster 77 times a year and giving Williams a shot at New York's short porch in right? Mightn't each then make a run at Ruth's home run record and hit 50 points higher? No. This is about what would have happened, based on projections from the actual batting performance of DiMaggio at Boston, Williams at New York, and the relative merits of the Yankee and Red Sox pitching staffs. (DiMaggio would not have been able to feast off weak Boston pitching, and would have had to contend with Yankee arms, while Williams would have experienced some relief.) Had each man played his entire career in the other's uniform, the results might well have looked like this: DiMaggio with Boston, Williams with New York Joe DiMaggio, NY BA: .325 HR: 361 Joe DiMaggio, Bos BA: .340 HR: 417 Ted Williams, Bos BA: .344 HR: 521 Ted Williams, NY BA: .340 HR: 513 By the time such a trade was actually considered--in 1949, when DiMaggio was near the end and Williams was still in his prime--the Red Sox would have made a very bad bargain. But if DiMaggio had gone from the San Francisco Seals in 1935 straight to Boston, and Williams from Minneapolis in 1938 straight to New York . . .