San Diego Padres and park effects

The San Diego Padres and park effects

The linked article reinforces the point I made earlier about how sportswriters don't "get" park effects. The article refers to the Padres weak offense and calls them "pitching-rich." Dude, any team would appear that way if their home park was Yellowstone, aka PETCO.

The Padres scored 343 runs on the road, compared to a NL average of 336. Put them in Coors and you'd think they were the '27 Yankees. The poorest offense in the league (excluding the pathetic Pirates, who are really not in the league) is actually in Colorado, and people think the Rockies can hit! The Rockies scored only 290 runs on the road. But here's the effect of home parks: although the Padres outscore the Rockies 343-290 on the road, the Rockies outscore the Padres 479-322 at home!

That's not a misprint, by the way. The Rockies scored 479 runs at home, 290 on the road. Although they have the second-worst offense in the league (assuming you consider Pittsburgh part of the league), their home park makes them appear to be very close to the best. Only the Reds, who really do have a good offense, scored more total runs.

As for San Diego's pitching-rich team, well, they do have decent pitching, but the reason they allowed the fewest runs of any team in the league is that they had a 2.90 ERA at home. Latos was the only starter with a road ERA below 4.00! Wade LeBlanc had a 2.71 ERA at PETCO, but his road ERA was (are you sitting down for this?) 6.11. Now THERE'S a split. Clayton Richard's 14-9 record looks pretty impressive, but his 4.41 road ERA is much less so. And so forth.

Overall, their road stats show that are 45 runs better than the NL average on defense, and 7 better on offense, so they are better at defense, but are not a wildly unbalanced team, and their offense is OK. The Padres are nowhere near as unbalanced as the Rockies, who are (+29) on defense and (-46) on offense. In fact, using road stats as the yardstick, the only NL playoff team which is significantly more balanced than the Padres is the Braves, with (+27d, +11o). The Giants (+52d, +14o) and Phils (+48d, +19o) are also better at defense than offense, in about the same proportions as the Padres (and both have stronger pitching staffs, by the way). The Reds are similarly unbalanced, but in the other direction (+17d, +55o)

I know somebody is going to ask this. The Pirates are VERY balanced. They suck at absolutely everything. They have the league's worst offense and the league's worst defense. (-97d, -84o) They do have a beautiful ballpark in a dramatic location. If only they had some reason for the fans to go there.