Sunday, August 24

Take 30 seconds and look it up

The Park Factor for Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, over the past three seasons, is 100 for pitchers and 100 for batters. That means it's exactly league average. Last year, both were below 100, making it a slight pitcher's park according to Baseball-Reference's calculations.

ESPN uses a different system that rates Arlington as a better place for batters, but even with their methodology the place ranks 11th in the league this year and was 19th last year.

In light of this very modest amount of research that I did and that anyone with a small amount of free time and a computer can do, can Tribe broadcasters Manning and Underwood please, please go more than 10 minutes without talking about what an astounding hitter's field this is? The sheer volume of references they make to it would be numbing even if it were factually accurate.

Check it out: as I was writing the previous paragraph, Underwood was surmising what it would be like if teams only got two outs when batting instead of three. I'm not making this up. Now STO is showing a graphic about how the park ranks in terms of teams' runs scored, batting average and such (all very high), conveniently ignoring the rather obvious fact that the Rangers are awesome at hitting (1st in the AL in runs scored) and awful at pitching (last in AL in runs allowed). This would be true anywhere. I'm tired.

No comments: