MLB Tool Analysis: Ballpark Factors
If you’re reading this, then you probably already know that RotoGrinders has some of the best free content in the industry. The free daily research tools being offered can do wonders for your bankroll.
Every Thursday I’ll be highlighting one of our free research tools and show you how to you can use it to identify players that should be on your radar.
Today we are going to take a look at Ballpark Factors. Everyone knows that Coors is the best hitter’s park in the MLB, but what parks have similar splits or even better splits in certain categories? This tool helps us find those parks and we can use the information to our advantage when building lineups.
Coors Field ranks first in runs by a pretty large margin, but we can see from the chart above that Coors ranks fourth in home runs. This is something that we can certainly use to our advantage to gain an edge and shy away from the herd. Stacking Coors games is the common thing to do, but what if there are also games in Cincy, Philly or Toronto on that same slate? Stacking the game from one of those parks instead of Coors could give you a huge leg up on the competition if the Coors game ends up being a 3-2 final score.
There are also parks that favor one handedness over the other. Let’s first take a look at the top parks for left-handed hitters. The Rogers Centre actually ranks higher than Coors, and Camden Yards is just slightly behind in third. We can also see that Great American Park has a huge splits difference from lefties to righties. I’ll certainly be favoring lefties more in Cincy compared to righties. Another stat that jumps out to me is the HR rate at Fenway. The HR rate at Fenway is very low, but both lefties and righties have some of the top rankings there. The extra-base hits (doubles & triples) rankings at Fenway are near the top in both categories. This is probably due to the monster turning homers in doubles and the spacious right-center field area.
Let’s not forget about those right-handed bats either. This is where Coors takes the cake by a wide margin. Comerica Park coming in second is certainly a slight surprise to me, and it’s likely that your opponents don’t know that either. Stack those Tigers righties straight to the bank. Angel Stadium is another ballpark that gets overlooked. The Angels are usually lowered owned just because they are a west coast team. This is just another reason why they’re often a sneaky tournament stack.
These are a few quick examples of how you can use ballpark factors aid in your lineup building process. It’s certainly an under-utilized tool on my end so I’m certainly going to start giving it some more weight in my research process.
Hopefully this information will help you in your quest to build a profitable lineup. Have a great weekend and check back next week as I highlight another free RG MLB research tool. As always feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me on twitter, @Socky21