One of the principal tenets of performance analysis is the idea that a
player’s statistics are affected by his home ballpark. That’s why most
serious performance metrics account for the environment in which a player
plays using a park factor. This park factor is generally arrived at by
comparing the number of runs scored in all games in team’s home park and
comparing that to the number of runs scored in that team’s road games.
I have found that there is good reason to doubt the value of these park
factors in a single season. I believe the relative ease or difficulty in
hitting in a specific park has a large random aspect, and hence much less
weight should be put on park factor for any single season.
This is important for people who calculate, for example, that the
performance of Hitter A in any given year was more valuable than that of
Hitter B, based on his
Equivalent Average
or Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). That is, if A played in a home ballpark with a calculated park
factor of 105 and B played in a ballpark with a 95 park factor and their
performances were comparable, many sabermetric stats will conclude that
player B was more productive. But if there is a degree of randomness–call
it an error rate–in ballpark factors of five percent or more, there is a
chance that in fact each player played in a neutral park.
How can it be that park factors could be off by so much? The answer is
limited sample size. A park factor for any given year is based on only 81
home games. In many seasons, some teams will play even fewer (due to
non-rescheduled rain-outs and so on). Eighty or so games are not enough to
eliminate a large error rate. A park with a park factor of 95 one year and
100 the next very likely cannot be said to be relatively easier to hit in
the second year. Instead, it is fair to conclude that by random chance,
there was a five percent differential in the two seasons (assuming that
major changes did not occur with other home parks in the league).
Over 10 or 15 years, the error rate becomes much smaller as the sample size
increases. Unfortunately, it is problematic to average out a park factor
over more than a few years because the conditions of one or more of the
ballparks in a league change. New stadiums are built, existing stadiums
change their dimensions, and abnormal weather patterns have an impact.
Nonetheless, a 10-year sample is likely to be more accurate than a one-year
accounting.
Let’s look at some examples. Excepting 2000, which looks like "an
aberration," Oriole Park at Camden Yards appears to be a very average
facility to hit in, with only a very slight edge to the pitchers. From
1996-1999, its ballpark factor averaged 98.25, almost exactly average:
1996: 99 1997: 97 1998: 98 1999: 99 2000: 95
But from 1992 through 1995, the first four years of its life, Camden Yards
was actually a decent hitters’ park, averaging a PF of 104:
1992: 103 1993: 103 1994: 105 1995: 105
What happened to change the personality of Oriole Park? The obvious answer
is that after 1995, a number of new ballparks came on line and caused the
relative ease of hitting in Camden Yards to go down. Now, The Ballpark in
Arlington and Jacobs Field–both renowned as hitters’ parks–came to life
in 1994. Yet in 1994 and 1995, Camden Yards was much more friendly to
hitters than were either. TBiA looked for its first three years almost like
Camden Yards looks today:
1994: 100 1995: 98 1996: 100
The Jake looked the same for its first three years:
1994: 100 1995: 100 1996: 100
The only major renovation of an existing park that occurred in 1996 was to
the Oakland Coliseum. But that change, which altered the Athletics’ home
park from being very pitcher-friendly (93.25 average PF) to only slightly
less pitcher-friendly (97 average PF), could not have caused a major impact
on Oriole Park for the next five years.
Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City was slightly renovated in 1995 and Edison
International Field was remodeled in 1998. However, neither change seems to
have affected the relative hitter-friendliness of either park. Kauffman
Stadium (nee Royals Stadium) is still friendly to offense, and Edison (nee
Anaheim Stadium) is still very average.
Starting in 1997, both Jacobs Field and The Ballpark in Arlington
inexplicably adopted new personalities: going from average places to hit to
great ones. The Jake:
1997: 105 1998: 104 1999: 104 2000: 105
And The Ballpark:
1997: 104 1998: 103 1999: 103 2000: 102
Why did they change? Chances are, they did not.The difference is likely due
entirely to randomness, or "error rate."
The Skydome in Toronto has not been remodeled since it opened in 1989.
Because it is a quasi-indoor facility, its annual PFs have been quite
consistent:
1993: 102 1994: 100 1995: 100 1996: 106 1997: 101 1998: 100 1999: 101 2000: 102
1996 stands out, and no other attribution, save the fact that there is a
randomness to park factor heretofore ignored, explains it. The Skydome’s
park factor of 106 that season means that stats like ERA+, EqA, and SNVA
may all have been miscalculated for Blue Jays’ players.
Take Woody Williams. In 1996, he posted a 4.73 ERA. The following
season for Toronto, Williams improved to a 4.35 ERA. Yet because of the
error rate in park factor, Williams’s ERA+ declined from 112 to 106. Alex
Gonzalez had virtually identical seasons offensively in 1996 and 1907: a
691 OPS in the first season followed by a 689 OPS in the second, with
virtually the same secondary numbers. However, because of that erroneous
park factor, Gonzalez’s EqA rose from .229 in ’96 to .243 in ’97.
Getting back to what caused the "change in personality" observed
at Oriole Park, we might find that part of it is due to the reconfiguration
of the American League after the most recent expansion. County Stadium,
home of the Milwaukee Brewers in the AL through 1997, was replaced by
Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Despite Tropicana’s
reputation as a homerdome, it has had a neutral impact on run scoring so far:
1998: 104 1999: 100 2000: 100
But if County Stadium was a very difficult park in which to hit, then that
might go toward explaining why Camden Yards is now seemingly not so
friendly to hitters. Unfortunately, County Stadium was actually a hitters’
paradise compared with Tropicana Field:
1994: 105 1995: 108 1996: 105 1997: 101
So the change of leagues by the Brewers and the addition of the Devil Rays
to the American League explains absolutely nothing about why the park
factors of Oriole Park have changed.
Other explanations? The 2000 season was the first full year for two new
American League ballparks, Safeco Field in Seattle and Comerica Park in
Detroit. By reputation the old parks in those cities were hitters’ parks,
but let’s look at the numbers. The Kingdome (100.7 park factor) was very
average its last six full seasons:
1993: 100 1994: 102 1995: 103 1996: 100 1997: 99 1998: 100
Tiger Stadium (100) was exactly average in its last seven years:
1993: 99 1994: 100 1995: 101 1996: 99 1997: 99 1998: 101 1999 : 101
In 2000, Comerica (97 PF) and Safeco (91) were respectively somewhat
unfriendly and very unfriendly to hitters. But neither explains in any sense
what caused Oriole Park to become relatively tougher to hit in following
the 1995 season.
If you only look at the numbers for Yankee Stadium the last two years, you
might conclude that the park in the Bronx became easier to hit in at the
same time Comerica and Safeco entered the American League:
1999: 91 2000: 104
However, for the nine seasons prior to 1999, Yankee Stadium was a very
average facility, averaging a PF of exactly 99. Certainly weather may
explain some of the variation over the last two years, but random chance
run amok seems a much stronger argument, as the weather was in fact not
dramatically different the past two summers in New York and the great
decrease in park factor in 1999 came before Comerica and Safeco (mostly)
opened.
As with the "changes" at Camden Yards, The Jake, The Metrodome, The
Ballpark, and so on, I suggest that randomness and limited sample sizes are
the best explanations of the dramatic changes in New York.
What all of this data underscores is that it is unwise to rely too heavily
on single-season park factors in rating any one player or team. If a
facility, year after year, appears to be very friendly to hitters (such as
Coors Field) or to pitchers (such as Dodger Stadium), then some adjustment
is rightly made to a players’ stats. But to conclude that, say, Oriole Park
is not friendly to hitters, based only on what has taken place there the
last five years, is to ignore that there is randomness in what appears to
be good or bad for hitters and it is to overstate the reliability of
park-factor calculations.
(Ed. note: For more on the use of multiple-year vs. single-year park
factors, see Clay Davenport’s essay on the topic in
Baseball Prospectus
2001.)
Rich Rifkin, 36, is an Oakland native and a lifelong fan of the Oakland
Athletics who lives in Davis, Calif. He can be reached at richrifkin@aol.com.
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