Gonzalez Loves Mountains; Headley Hates Beaches
Well, actually I have no idea if Carlos Gonzalez loves the mountains or if Chase Headley hates the beach, but if my home/road splits looked like their’s, I would certainly start to appreciate/blame the topography.
Many have pointed out how dramatic a split young Carlos Gonzalez possess — at home in Colorado, he’s an elite swing sultan; away from where the beer flows like wins, he is a pedestrian, league-average bat-swinger. Yeah, we get it. Everyone knows, right?
Well, the split is perhaps more dramatic than initially anticipated. Looking at players in the last decade (from 2001 through 2011) with a minimum of 500 home and 500 away PAs, we see CarGo has hit a wRC+ 74 points higher at home than away — more than anyone else in the period:
In other words, no one compares to Carlos Gonzalez… Okay, well, actually one guy does.
And it makes a world of difference.
Before the CarGo Era, there was the Matt Holliday Era. Matt Holliday had a wRC+ 66 points higher in the Rockies during his tenure with Colorado. Then, he got traded to the St. Louis Cardinals and continued to mash like he never left Colorado.
What does this mean? Hellifiknow. But it certainly means that being a product of Coors Field doesn’t necessarily make a body a bad player. Perhaps it helped make a young Holliday look better than he really was, and then when he became an even better player, we just didn’t notice. Who knows?
In the meantime, San Diego Padres hitters must be just about sick of the west coast life. Chase Headley and a pair of other Padres have seen their wRC+ absolutely bottom out in PETCO Caverns Park.
Here’s the top 9 and bottom 9 (why 9? Because I’m feeling frisky) home/road split differences for 2001 through 2011 (min. 500 PAs both home and away):
| Name | Team | PA | BB% | K% | HR% | wRC+ | wRC+ Diff |
| Carlos Gonzalez | COL | 1495 | 8% | 21% | 4.9% | 138 | 74 |
| Alfonso Soriano | TEX | 1340 | 5% | 18% | 4.8% | 107 | 71 |
| Matt Holliday | COL | 2968 | 8% | 17% | 4.3% | 134 | 66 |
| Luke Scott | BAL | 1795 | 11% | 20% | 4.7% | 115 | 62 |
| Nelson Cruz | TEX | 2077 | 8% | 22% | 5.1% | 115 | 58 |
| Scott Hatteberg | CIN | 1017 | 13% | 8% | 2.3% | 111 | 54 |
| Ian Kinsler | TEX | 3446 | 10% | 12% | 3.6% | 119 | 54 |
| Frank Thomas | CHW | 1730 | 16% | 18% | 5.8% | 137 | 52 |
| Justin Upton | ARI | 2402 | 10% | 24% | 3.8% | 119 | 50 |
| Felipe Lopez | WAS | 1354 | 9% | 16% | 1.0% | 78 | -33 |
| Dmitri Young | DET | 1976 | 7% | 19% | 4.1% | 115 | -34 |
| D’Angelo Jimenez | CIN | 1102 | 12% | 15% | 1.7% | 98 | -35 |
| Miguel Tejada | OAK | 1418 | 6% | 11% | 4.3% | 121 | -35 |
| Xavier Nady | PIT | 1050 | 6% | 18% | 3.4% | 116 | -35 |
| Adrian Gonzalez | SDP | 3425 | 12% | 18% | 4.7% | 135 | -35 |
| Omar Infante | DET | 1732 | 6% | 18% | 1.8% | 79 | -36 |
| Khalil Greene | SDP | 2642 | 7% | 20% | 3.2% | 93 | -36 |
| Chase Headley | SDP | 2114 | 10% | 22% | 1.7% | 108 | -37 |
Wow A-Gonz had a negative split at home? Would love to see why, considering he was hitting in Fenway…
It’s 2001-2011. That’s his PetCo data you’re seeing
Not only is this 2001-2011, these numbers are split by team, and the Gonzalez numbers on the chart only include his time with San Diego.
But, Bradley, if your goal is to find guys who just have some innate skill at hitting better home/away, then you shouldn’t split by team, and expand your sample size cutoff to something more significant. If you did that, I’d think Adrian Beltre would lead the pack.
Good thoughts Yirmi.
Actually, this data is just a byproduct of some other research I’m working on for Fangraphs, so it was more of a “Oh my!” observation than an effort to divine home/away skills.
It’s important to also keep in mind that playing at Coors boosts your home stats while suppressing road stats – look at Matt Holliday’s road numbers during his time with COL and during his time with STL
Same with the Rangers. Lots of away games in pitcher’s parks.
I’ve heard this posited before but do you have anything substantial to support this?
Park factors? I don’t think you have to get any more complicated to at least verify that the theory is likely at least partially correct.
The Rockies play in a division with three of the more pitcher-friendly parks in baseball.
It wouldn’t be terribly complicated to come up with a “road park factor” by looking at a given team’s schedule and calculating the average of all of the park factors of the road games.
“why 9? Because I’m feeling frisky”
Nice try, Bradley Woodrum – or should I say, HERMAN CAIN!
I knew it.
Drat! I’ve been discovered!
For more specifically on the Coors effect, I highly recommend this piece from AthleticsNation:
http://www.athleticsnation.com/2010/8/8/1611852/carlos-gonzalez-a-god-on-a-mountain
Interesting bits:
1) It delves into the other half of the Coors effect – do Colorado players, having acclimated to pitch movement in thin air, struggle in away games because the ball just moves differently.
2) Tons of analysis on pitch selection and behavior.
3) Like Woodrum’s piece, mountains are again alluded to.
I highly recommend that article as well. That was Bojan before he joined THT. A teaser:
“And that’s what I did for the better part of the weekend. As a self proclaimed chief AN researcher and a self appointed head of AN Labs, I looked at every single pitch that was thrown in the Majors this year and tried to make sense of it all.”
The name that really jumps out at me from that list is Scott Hatteberg. On the chart his primary team is listed as Cincy, but as the movie Moneyball reminded us, he spent a majority of the 2000′s playing in Oakland (the place where batting average goes to die). And Great American Ballpark only really helps with home runs. So he was only getting maybe a small boost in park advantage with the Reds, and a huge negative effect in Oakland. Way to come through for the home crowd Hattie!
The authors’ stats are split up by team. It’s not that Hattegberg’s primary team is Cincy, it’s that the stats listed only include his time with Cincy. His time with Oakland would be listed separately, and presumably wasn’t in the top or bottom 9.
Okay, thanks Yirmi. I don’t think that was explicitly stated in the article, but it makes sense. I also agree with many of your points in your other reply about analyzing home/away splits. Same player but different park is always a fascinating what-if scenario.
Halliday was actually traded to Oakland where he played half a season and hit for no power and was then traded St. Louis mid season.
Guess I didn’t help the Jays out enough to make this list :(
Aw, I see what you did there.
irrelevant–or is it…–fact: Headley is from Colorado.
And Cargo is from Maracaibo where elevation is practically nil!
oh
The strange thing about Young was that he spent most of that time in Detroit in the extreme pitchers’ days of Comerica.