Total Baseball (1994 Edition)/Total_Baseball_1994_Edition_Creative_Multimedia_1994.iso/dp/0121/01210.txt

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$Title{Home Road Statistics:  Introduction}
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$Subject{Home Road Statistics Introduction}
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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 . . .