I stumbled across Dan Szymborski’s Minor League Park Factors over at BBTF. There are a lot of issues with park factors and they should never ever ever be taken as more than a rough measuring stick, imo. The Cardinals parks rank from most pitcher friendly to least: Palm Beach, Memphis, Quad Cities , Springfield. Springfield is the only true hitters park in that group. I’ve come to distrust park factors more and more in the last few months. The numbers that Dan, creator of ZiPS, posted aren’t split by the batter’s handedness which is a problem. A park can look nuetral or even favorable on balance while still offering huge benefits to just one set of batters. Yankee Stadium, for example, inflates HRs by left-handed hitters while suppressing them from right-handers (which just makes ARod all the more incredible).
So that’s my first major issue with park factors. Composite numbers hide too many nuances of a ballpark. The next problem is sample size. Don’t trust single year park factors. FirstInning has their park factors split by handedness but use single year park factors (although I think there are plans to move to a weighted park factor). As always, less data increases the uncertainty of the numbers.
The last component that bothers me is brought specifically to light by the BBTF park factor for Memphis. The team that the Cardinals has been fielding the last few years in Memphis has been just god-awful. They’ve ranked near the back of the pack in offense for a while now and are just generally a stock pile of minor league veterans and major league failures. I don’t say that as a slight to anyone but it’s been a while since they’ve had a season with multiple true prospects on the team. Weighted multi-year park factors help this problem (especially if your team has an aberrant year) but I’m not sure it solves it. I don’t believe the park factors that say Memphis is more of a pitcher’s park than QC. I could be wrong but I don’t think I am. (Azru edit: After considering this point further, I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t accurate and is probably more a subset of my second point. There’s still some random variation in single year park factors that will produce the Memphis vs. QC effect as opposed to Memphis just totally sucking.)
Park Factors have their uses but, as I said earlier, they’re a big picture type of metric and are ill-suited to real fine tuning of numbers.
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erik
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My understanding of park factors is that they factor in a team’s hitting strength (or ineptness)by comparing how that team does in Park X vs all other parks. Same for the visiting team - it factors in how Iowa hits at memphis vs everywhere else.
So the woeful collection at Memphis should not artificially influence whatever park factor is ultimately calculated for the park in Memphis.
They should but I’ve seen park factors calculated different ways (and sometimes they don’t make that comparison). A lot of it is black box algorithm that I can’t speak too.
I might be missing something here. (I’ll do some additional digging in the next couple of days — I’m swamped with school right now.) The BBTF not having handedness though makes me want to beat my head against my desk.
As an addendum, if you are right sidd - I’ll post about. I am wrong sometimes and when that happens, I try to be forthcoming about it.
Here’s a good article at baseball-refernce.com that discusses how THEY do it:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/parkadjust.shtml
Everyone seems to do it differently though; ESPN’s park factors are different from BBRef’s, which are different from MLB’s, etc.
Not sure how much you guys follow minor league transactions and I think at this time of the year the minor league DL is worthless anyway but according to BA between 15Sep and 21Sep the follow transactions occurred:
St. Louis Cardinals
Outrighted off 40-man roster: LHP Troy Cate
Reinstated from disabled list: RHP Adam Reifer, RHP Blake Hawksworth, RHP Brian Stitt, RHP David Kopp, RHP Denny Dove, RHP Elvis Hernandez, RHP Josh Wilson, RHP Mike Sillman, RHP Pete Parise, RHP Phil Andersen, RHP Robert Ransom, LHP Chris Narveson, LHP Jaime Garcia, LHP Josh Fritsche, C Ryan Christianson, 1B Brandon Buckman, 3B Brian Cartie, 3B Jared Schweitzer, 3B Juan Richardson, SS Tyler Greene, SS Rico Washington, OF Antonio DeJesus, OF Ian Church, OF John Rodriguez, OF Jon Jay, OF Sean Danielson
Reinstated from inactive list: RHP Armando Carrasco, RHP Kris Bakey, C Wilmer Alvarado, SS Willian Sandoval
Thanks Sleepy. I need to set aside some time to wade through that.
Would be nice to see Dove have a healthy season in Memphis. That mid-90’s sinker is somewhat exciting. Josh Wilson: Next year’s Tyler Herron?
What does Wilson’s stuff look like?
His scouting report from the ‘05 draft says fastball in the low 90’s with plus curve and changeup. He’s since had the dreaded labrum surgery, though, so it remains to be seen what his fb looks like until next spring. Next year will only be his age 20/21 season, though.
Draft video:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/draft/y2005/tracker/search.jsp?sc=team&sp=sln&pg=2
Interview from back in May:
http://www.macsportsandentertainment.com/news%20WILSON%20ALMOST%20BACK.htm
I have seen kids come back from labrum surgery. You need to be young, but it can be done. He probably will need a year removed from the sugery to come back to full strength. Too bad they have banned human growth hormones, they probably would have helped.
hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you, sir.