January 25, 2009
Rocky Road
Via Purple Row, Bay Bridge Baseball does some interesting research on Matt Holliday:
The point to all this is that you can't just take Matt Holliday's career splits (.357 at Coors Field and .281 on the road) and say: "Well, he's really a .281 hitter." That .281 average is the sum of a lot of games in which Holliday was trying to get acclimated to sea-level pitching. In theory, if you took Holliday (or any Colorado hitter) and put him at sea level all the time, he'd be a much better hitter than he was wearing the Rockies' road grays.
So if my theory was accurate, I could look at Holliday's road games with the Rockies and see that his performance would improve the longer the team was on the road, because there would be more time to adjust.
Using the Day by Day Database, Jeff Fletcher shows that Holliday gets better the longer he spends on the road. I would not have expected that. After all, athletes train at high altitude so they can perform better at oxygen rich lower elevations. I would think after spending 10 days playing in Denver, a hitter's bat would be a little quicker playing at sea level in Los Angeles or San Diego.
Fletcher's implication is that hitters should be better on the road when they're not playing for the Rockies than when they sit on the Colorado roster. The following table lists batting averages for players with at least 600 AB on the road while playing for the Rockies and at least 600 at bats on the road for other teams:
Charles Johnson | 0.233 | 0.248 |
Willy Taveras | 0.281 | 0.284 |
Aaron Miles | 0.288 | 0.289 |
Yorvit Torrealba | 0.250 | 0.250 |
Kirt Manwaring | 0.247 | 0.245 |
Mike Lansing | 0.274 | 0.270 |
Jamey Carroll | 0.275 | 0.271 |
Juan Uribe | 0.258 | 0.251 |
Preston Wilson | 0.269 | 0.261 |
Joe Girardi | 0.274 | 0.264 |
Juan Pierre | 0.308 | 0.297 |
Walt Weiss | 0.266 | 0.252 |
Eric Young | 0.295 | 0.276 |
Ellis Burks | 0.306 | 0.286 |
Quinton McCracken | 0.291 | 0.269 |
Jeff Cirillo | 0.320 | 0.290 |
Neifi Perez | 0.282 | 0.251 |
Jay Payton | 0.309 | 0.271 |
Andres Galarraga | 0.316 | 0.274 |
Charlie Hayes | 0.298 | 0.254 |
Vinny Castilla | 0.294 | 0.249 |
Dante Bichette | 0.316 | 0.269 |
Larry Walker | 0.334 | 0.282 |
Jeff Reed | 0.286 | 0.233 |
Mike Kingery | 0.306 | 0.251 |
Terry Shumpert | 0.282 | 0.220 |
There's not much support for the adjustment theory in this data, although we should probably study a few more players on a game by game basis.
Posted by David Pinto at
03:08 PM
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Offense
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I'd look at comparable talent level players in this list. Bichette, Wlaker, and Gallaraga all had big drops in BA...look for a drop off with Holliday!
I'd look at comparable talent level players on this list. Look at Bichette, Walker, and Gallaraga; they all had big drops in BA once they left. I'd still expect Holliday to drop significantly this season.
If you look at Holliday's splits over the past couple of seasons:
2008 : .300 on the road
2007 : .301 on the road
There was a much larger gap in his first few seasons when he was away from Coors field. I'd still expect a slight drop in his average, but I'd blame that on getting adjusted to american league pitching more than anything else.
Dave, somehow it appears you missed Jeff's opening paragraph at Bay Bridge Baseball.
"I had this theory about Coors Field. Everyone knows the players who play there don't do as well on the road as at home, but it's not just because of what happens in Colorado after you hit the ball. It's also because of what happens after the pitcher throws the ball. Curve balls and sliders don't break as much."
He is not saying anyting about the effects of "a hitter's bat would be a little quicker playing at sea level". He is talking about getting use to curves and sliders breaking more at sea level then they do at altitude.
Your analysis also fails to accouunt for the hitters being at different stages of their career relative to thier peak performance level during these Road ABs while a Rockie vs Road ABs while not a Rochie. From your numbers you really don't know how much of the measured increases were from reaching ones peak performance level or how much of the measured decreases were from starting the decline phase of one's career.
I am not saying that I agree with Jeff. But I am saying it is worth looking into and your quick and dirty analysis doesn't do any better of a job of this then Jeff's and may even be worse.
I think Fletcher is on to something a lot of people haven't properly understood (or take the time to properly understand), which is the Coors Effect. For so long it was stated in simplified terms: Rockies hitters are somewhere between their home and road numbers, but are not worth their home numbers because the place is "the best offensive park in baseball". That being a misleading statement since the early 2000s aside, if Holliday does perform well in Oakland, and other comparable cases can be looked at, it would certainly bode well for the reputations of Todd Helton and Larry Walker. It's hard to reconcile Bichette's lackluster post-Colorado career to Castilla's below-average performances, and both of theirs to Galarraga's awesome two years in Atlanta.
Most endurance athletes train at altitude because it better enables them to have a higher VO2 max, which means that athletes are able to better process oxygen in order to sustain higher levels of fitness over an extended period of time. Baseball activity isn't an endurance sport. Thus Jeff's analysis may make some sense if it's an adjustment thing.
If baseball were more about pushing your aerobic threshold, then over time you would see a decrease of stats as players spent more time on the road, but it's not. It's not an endurance sport, and so Jeff's analysis on Holliday may make sense.
I think he's onto something as well. I live at 2500 feet, and I'd bet my bat --metaphorically-- isn't quicker, it's slower when I go down to sea level. The air is thicker at sea level, hence, more friction.
Athletes train at high altitude to force their bodies to get used to dealing with less oxygen. With less oxygen in the air, there is an increase in the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, which translates into greater strength and endurance.
I think he's onto something as well. I live at 2500 feet, and I'd bet my bat --metaphorically-- isn't quicker, it's slower when I go down to sea level. The air is thicker at sea level, hence, more friction.
Athletes train at high altitude to force their bodies to get used to dealing with less oxygen. With less oxygen in the air, there is an increase in the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, which translates into greater strength and endurance.
Looking at that list reminds me of a thought I had once: is Vinny Castilla the worst hitter ever to manage to hit 300 career home runs? Looking at the list, he seems to be the only one with a sub 100 OPS+ for his career. Even the ever hyper Coors inflated Dante Bichette managed a 106--albeit with only 274 HR.
I think the issue raised pertains to the length of a road trip, not moving to a different team. The ball behaves differently at altitude (much straighter) and athletic performance is different (quicker bats). Suddenly go to sea level and you would have to adjust. So the first couple of games you would be playing in strange conditions and would be expected to suck. But by the 3rd or 4th series on a road trip you would have adjusted and be playing up to your potential.
At least that's how I interpret the idea.