My latest at Baseball Prospectus ($) revisits a familiar topic, with an added wrinkle. We know that the Padres, who play half their games in baseball’s least hitter-friendly environment, enjoy less of a home-field advantage than many other teams. Replace “least” and “less” with “most” and “more,” and we’re talking about the Rockies.
The wrinkle is that both teams are playing worse at home than usual. I won’t go into all the details (that’s what the article is for), but chew on this:
| Padres | MLB | Rockies Year(s) | Home Road Diff | Home Road Diff | Home Road Diff ----------+------------------+------------------+----------------- 2007-2010 | .522 .455 +.066 | .551 .449 +.103 | .606 .438 +.168 2011 | .372 .500 -.128 | .526 .474 +.053 | .500 .487 +.013 Numbers are through Sun., Jun 26 Diff column may contain rounding errors
Curious, no?
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On a quasi-related note, I forgot to mention last week’s article ($). It focuses on the Giants but contains a “fun” list of catchers most frequently used by Bruce Bochy during his tenure as Padres manager (Ben Davis tops the list, which probably haunts Bochy as much as it does you and me).
Enjoy…