Comments on: What’s Going on at Safeco Field?

By: Corey

Corey — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:42:51 +0000

Remember winning more than anybody ever has in the history of the game when we moved out of the dome?

By: Corey

Corey — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:37:47 +0000

Good lord this is a big thread. Yogi Berra said “90% of baseball is mental, the other half is physical.” Mostly I just like to use that quote whenever possible, but it’s a nice lead in to what I think the REAL park effect of Safeco is. Players’ heads. I don’t know what the actual park effects were, but I remember Mariners teams that scored a lot of runs and didn’t seem to have too much trouble getting the ball out of Safeco (although yes, it was still a pitchers park, I’m not disputing that). Safeco didn’t seem to drag down Boone’s numbers or Olerud’s or Edgar’s or Buhner’s. At the same time Ichiro thrived, though admittedly some of those guys aren’t power hitters, still, it didn’t seem in those days like the park was holding back hitters that much. At the same time we’ve seen some less than brilliant pitching in Safeco, the ace of that 2001 staff was Freddy Garcia who I liked, but he was no ace, then Sele, a solid #2, also a solid #2. So that’s 3 decent #2 starters and 2 fillers. None of them lit the league up, certainly none were as goo as Felix Hernandez since then. More recently Brandon Morrow couldn’t get anybody out at all in Seattle, he seems to have found himself since moving to Toronto. What I think is happening has little to do with the park itself, its that the league has convinced themselves that Safeco is brutal to hitters, so they don’t hit the way they hit everywhere else. Adrian Beltre’s time in Seattle were some of his worst years, but the important observation comes from watching the game, he didn’t LOOK like Adrian Beltre, the park doesn’t cause a power hitter to hit soft pop ups and ground balls to 2nd base and short right field. It’s in the player’s heads, and if the Mariners could get it out of their own heads it might be an advantage for opposing teams to come in thinking they have to do something different than they normally do, but the Mariners are the worst Safeco headcases in the league. Yonder Alonso’s power his disappeared this season with just 4 home runs all year, he had one when the Padres walked into Safeco in mid-June but he walked into Safeco and blasted one to the back of the lower deck, I realize this is the worst of generalizing from nonexistent sample sizes, but Alonso can’t seem to get it out of any park, but Safeco didn’t seem to hold him back, if you hit the ball hard it will travel, if you convince yourself that you can’t hit in that park and do something different than what you normally do you’re not going to hit no matter how thick the air or short the fences.

This is largely a mental invention of the players themselves, which makes it a self fulfilling prophecy.

By: Yohan

Yohan — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:32:02 +0000

Remember winning when we had a true dome?

By: evo34

evo34 — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:30:45 +0000

Some actual data from Seattle home games from 2005-2011:

All home games: 8.28 rpg.
482 games with roof open to start game: 8.34 rpg.
85 games with roof closed to start game: 7.94 rpg.

Avg. temp. for roof-open games: 65.4 deg.
Avg. wind vector out to CF for roof-open games: +0.4 mph.
Avg. wind vector left to right for roof-open games: +1.0 mph.
Correl. of wind vector out to CF to rpg: +0.05.
Correl. of temp. to to rpg: +0.05.

By: evo34

evo34 — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:19:25 +0000

The thing you don;t mention is that temp. is positively correlated with pitch velocity, which in turn is correlated with higher K rates. So at least two offsetting factors at work in a cold environment.

By: Franky

Franky — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:13:57 +0000

I’m not suggesting Cameron is a loser. I’m saying that’s how losers talk. They (the M’s) find reasons to justify their losing ways. And until these guys like Smoak, Ackley, Carp, Guti and Montero start hitting the ball with some Authority, then we can talk about other “factors”.

By: Gihyou

Gihyou — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:35:36 +0000

Sorry, I stopped at ‘loser talk’.