June 17, 2016

What Happened to PETCO Park?

The Nationals beat the Padres 8-5 Thursday night. It’s part of a recent trend in San Diego of high scoring games. So far in 2016, fans at PETCO are seeing an average of 9.08 runs per game. There have been 46 runs scored on this four game home stand, and four times this month one of the teams reached double digits in runs (12 games).

That runs per game figure is a little more impressive than it looks. The Padres have never played in a high-scoring stadium. The team existed since 1969, and the only full season in which the home field saw more than nine runs per game was 1997, when teams combined to score 9.69 runs per game at the old Jack Murphy Stadium. If the current scoring trend holds up, 2016 would be just the second season at that level.

I’ll just note that 1997 was also an El Nino year.

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