One of the central themes in 2004 here in Padreland was the home club’s inability to take advantage of the spacious new downtown ballpark. But how much did Petco Park actually hurt hitters?
The answer, at least using one season’s worth of data (and only of Padres), is that it didn’t have much of an impact on the home team versus the previous two years at Qualcomm. This is true for any of a number of measurements, including runs scored, OPS, and RC/27. (Dataset is available as a CSV download for those interested. Thanks to Jeff at Leone at Third for providing the inspiration in gathering and assembling this.) The two real interesting things I found from sifting through the numbers are:
- among Padres, right-handed hitters were hurt a good deal more by Petco than were lefties;
- although the Padres enjoyed greater success on the road than at home, this was more a function of dramatic offensive improvement away from San Diego over the past few years than any decline that may have come from moving from the Q to Petco
As someone who watched the Padres almost religiously this season, I find the second point astounding. But the numbers back it up. There was no appreciable difference in their home output this year vs 2002 or 2003. Here are some team home/away splits:
OPS
Home Away Dif
2004 722 787 -65
2003 711 731 -20
2002 714 691 +23
Runs scored
Home Away Dif
2004 329 439 -110
2003 306 372 -66
2002 334 328 +6
RC/27
Home Away Dif
2004 4.55 5.38 -0.83
2003 4.26 4.60 -0.34
2002 4.32 3.95 +0.37
Run differential
Home Away
2004 -13 +76
2003 -70 -83
2002 -4 -149
The Padres OPS has been remarkably consistent at home over the past three seasons. Overall, the offense was stronger in San Diego this year than last and roughly equivalent to that of the 2002 edition. The big difference between 2002 and 2004, of course, is the 111 more runs scored by the Padres on the road this year. They are treading water in San Diego, regardless of the park, but over the past two seasons have become a monster away from home. So for as much as Petco Park may have gotten into some hitters’ heads, it sure looks like the once-daunting task of scoring runs on the road has even more emphatically gotten out of those same heads.
How about home runs? We keep hearing about those, right? The Padres can’t hit the ball out of their own park, but nobody else seems to be having trouble. What’s up with that?
Well, let’s just say they didn’t lose the ability to get outhomered at home when they moved downtown. The good news is the Padres actually improved in that area this year, and by a lot:
Homers at home
Pads Opp Dif
2004 57 75 -18
2003 55 95 -40
2002 59 76 -17
Again, much better than 2003 and pretty much in line with 2002. Padres hitters didn’t stop knocking homers at home (well, some of ‘em did but we’ll get to that in a minute). And on the bright side, the pitchers served up 20 fewer this year than last. That’s one every four games.
And back to our first point, that righties were hurt more by Petco than were lefties, check this out:
OPS (min 100 PA)
Left
Home Away Dif
Giles 864 834 +30
Klesko 808 888 -80
Long 752 758 -6
Burroughs 692 734 -42
Right
Home Away Dif
Loretta 870 900 -30
Nevin 829 887 -58
Hernandez 764 872 -108
Greene 683 895 -212
Payton 609 775 -176
Ryan Klesko suffered a pretty hefty drop in production at home but still managed to swing an 800+ OPS in an off year. The other lefties were only minimally affected by Petco Park.
On the other side of the dish, Mark Loretta achieved his OPS in radically different ways at home (.295/.373/.496) versus on the road (.368/.406/.494) but overall remained productive regardless of venue. Even the vocal Phil Nevin wasn’t hurt all that much by Petco. Ramon Hernandez took a pretty good hit at home, but the alarming differentials came from Jay Payton and Khalil Greene. (Interestingly, all three were in their first full season in San Diego. Adjustment period, perhaps?)
I don’t know what the record is for largest home/away OPS split, but I do know that Greene’s differential was greater than that of Vinny Castilla, who plays half his games at Coors Field.
Here’s the team data:
Home Away
BA OBP SLG OPS BA OBP SLG OPS
Left 275 352 394 747 284 354 411 765
Right 245 325 385 709 294 349 461 810
(Note: this doesn’t account for switch-hitter Freddy Guzman’s 80 PA, which I could not break down both by home/away and left/right.)
Oddly, despite the large home/away split in OPS for Padre right-handed hitters, it was lefties who had greater success on the road in terms of home runs:
Home runs
Left
Home Away %Home
Giles 10 13 .435
Klesko 3 6 .333
Long 1 2 .333
Vazquez 1 0 1.000
Burroughs 0 2 .000
Total 15 23 .395
Right
Home Away %Home
Nevin 12 14 .462
Loretta 11 5 .688
Hernandez 10 8 .556
Greene 3 12 .200
Buchanan 2 0 1.000
Nady 1 2 .333
Aurilia 1 1 .500
Quintero 1 1 .500
Ojeda 1 0 1.000
Payton 0 8 .000
Cirillo 0 1 .000
Total 42 59 .416
Incidentally, if those lefty numbers look a little anemic, it’s because five left-handed hitters had more homers in 2004 than all Padre southpaws combined:
Adam Dunn 46 Barry Bonds 45 Jim Thome 42 Jim Edmonds 41 David Ortiz 41
But I digress. The main point today is that, from an offensive standpoint (outfield defense is a whole other animal), the Padres don’t need to think so much about how to get Petco Park out of their heads as how to get whatever got in their heads on the road and apply that to their home games, regardless of venue. That last sentence stunk, but I think you know what I mean. This isn’t a team that can’t hit at home. This is a team that couldn’t hit anywhere and suddenly started bashing the ball on the road. Who’s to say they can’t do the same at Petco?
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