Park Size
We flock in groups to stack players from games at Coors Field or when the wind is blowing out at Wrigley Field, but the opposite reaction doesn’t seem nearly as prevalent. Sure, some ballparks have gained a reputation for being pitcher friendly. It’s common practice for most daily fantasy baseball players to downgrade hitters in Petco Park or Safeco Field for instance, but the ferocity of the negative adjustments pales in comparison to the general positive upgrades that seem all too common.
Ballparks generally fall into one of three buckets; pitcher friendly, fair, or hitter friendly. While most parks logically fall into the “fair” category, there are several factors that combine to consistently push certain ballparks outside of that range. These outliers are the parks that require your attention, so let’s take a look at some of underlying factors and the ballparks that you should treat with some exposure limitations.
Unlike most other sports, the size, shape, height, incline (thanks, Houston), etc of Major League Ballparks are far from standard. A 320-foot flyball to left field may fly over the Green Monster with ease in Boston but be a routine fly-out to Andrew McCutchen if it were hit at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. With home runs often being the determining factor in taking down a large-field GPP, it’s reasonable to operate under the assumption that the larger the ballpark, the less appealing players from that game are to roster. In fact, it’s even backed up by the numbers.
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