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The Best Place to Build Your Team?

posted by Shawn Hoffman, on February 28th, 2008 at 04:39 pm, in category Uncategorized

Caught this in an interview Josh Byrnes did with Jonah Keri:

Keri: If you had a choice of playing in any type of park you wanted, pitcher’s park, hitter’s park or neutral, which one would you choose?

Byrnes: Pitcher’s park. The hardest thing to do is find guys to throw 1,400 or so innings. Depth, defense, advance scouting, health, all of that and more goes into building a pitching staff, into getting all those outs you need to record over the course of a season. The stability of the pitching staff — when you can gear your innings toward the right guys, starters and relievers — that’s easier to do in a pitching environment.

I’ve always believed this as well, although it’s always been based on pure logic since I haven’t seen any real evidence. Your starters should collectively give you better innings than your last guys out of the bullpen, who are most often needed when a starter has to leave early. In a park that favors pitchers, starters should be able to go longer, allowing the team to better leverage their top relievers.

I took a very, very, quick look at this to see whether run environment has a real effect on starters’ innings. Using the 2007 National League, I ran the r-squared correlations for ERA, ERA+, park factor, and K/BB ratio against each team’s starters’ innings pitched totals:

  • ERA+: .653
  • ERA: .497
  • K/BB: .374
  • PF: .209

So the simple answer is yes, run environment does appear to have some effect, although not nearly as much as the quality (or luck) of the pitcher. This all makes sense. All other things being equal, it is probably a bit easier to build a roster in a pitcher’s park.

Could there be something larger here? Circumstantially, the teams that have played in the traditional bandbox stadiums (Wrigley, Fenway) haven’t been nearly as successful as those that have played in traditional pitcher’s parks (Dodger Stadium, Yankee Stadium). Could this just be the “Devil’s Theory of Park Effects” at work?

My eyes could very well by lying. If anyone has taken a closer look at this, or wants to, I’m all ears.

All data courtesy of B-Ref. Not that you didn’t know that already.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com


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  1. on February 28th at 06:59 pm
    David said:

    It seems like you’re thinking about the benefits on the micro level rather than the macro level. The advantage isn’t being able to better leverage your relievers on a game by game basis - the other team gets to do that as well. The advantage is that your pitchers will have to pitch less in half the games, so the amount they will pitch overall is less, which leads to less injury and fatigue. Also, with free agency, it’s probably easier to build a bullpen in a pitcher’s park because it’s enticing for guys looking for a short term deal where they can prove themselves - for example, it’s probably why Mark Prior signed with San Diego.

  2. on February 28th at 10:00 pm
    squawkingbaseball said:

    David - I agree. I could’ve made that clearer. The only reason I didn’t reiterate it was because it was pretty clear in the Byrnes quote. The point is very important though, and I’m glad you brought it up.

  3. on March 27th at 10:39 pm
    David de la Fuente said:

    They talked about the late 1970s Red Sox, playing in that Fenway bandbox, being a team of 25 guys that got in 25 cabs to go from the hotel to the ballpark. That’s just one anecdote, but I think offensive environments where guys (more) often can score three runs with one swing of the bat tend to promote less bonding and much more “me first” thinking than ballparks where more teamwork is required to score runs.

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