Rogers Centre Ballpark Effect

fmradioguy · Post #1 » by **fmradioguy** » Sun Oct 1, 2023 2:36 pm

The biggest story I find not being discussed enough this season has been the ballpark affect at Rogers Centre. Fans and the media often talk about the inconsistency of the team's offence when home and away stats clearly show the problem is with Rogers Centre, for whatever the reason.

At home, the Jays team OPS is 22nd in the majors. On the road, the Jays have the 5th highest OPS in the majors. Even the pitching staff is suffering at home with the 2nd fewest runs allowed at Rogers Centre but behind 6 other AL pitching staffs on the road (though AL teams are doing quite well on the road in general.)

Thoughts?

ItsDanger · Post #2 » by **ItsDanger** » Sun Oct 1, 2023 3:20 pm

https://www.si.com/mlb/bluejays/news/blue-jays-new-rogers-centre-outfield-dimensions-wall-heights

They attempted to make the entire changes neutral on hitting impact. But maybe we need more data to draw conclusion. Are the road team in Toronto having similar struggles?

JN · Post #3 » by JN » Sun Oct 1, 2023 3:41 pm

fmradioguy wrote:The biggest story I find not being discussed enough this season has been the ballpark affect at Rogers Centre. Fans and the media often talk about the inconsistency of the team's offence when home and away stats clearly show the problem is with Rogers Centre, for whatever the reason.

At home, the Jays team OPS is 22nd in the majors. On the road, the Jays have the 5th highest OPS in the majors. Even the pitching staff is suffering at home with the 2nd fewest runs allowed at Rogers Centre but behind 6 other AL pitching staffs on the road (though AL teams are doing quite well on the road in general.)

Thoughts?

I heard some podcast talking about this the other day.
Two things of note

1. Apparently 1 year sample is typically not enough to make any strong conclusions. 3 years is the period where things become more conclusive. Certainly looks like something might be going on, but I just can't see it being dimensions which were changed but not radically.
2. The "strength" of pitching was apparently a bit higher at home than the road - the imbalanced schedule caused by the 15 3 game series against NL teams. Although that would only close the current year variance slightly.

fmradioguy · Post #4 » by **fmradioguy** » Sun Oct 1, 2023 7:32 pm

ItsDanger wrote:https://www.si.com/mlb/bluejays/news/blue-jays-new-rogers-centre-outfield-dimensions-wall-heights

They attempted to make the entire changes neutral on hitting impact. But maybe we need more data to draw conclusion. Are the road team in Toronto having similar struggles?

I've been trying to find the stats specific to visitors to Rogers. All I have to compare is the Jays pitching staff, which is 2nd best in the AL in runs allowed at home but 7th on the road. Which would seem to indicate visiting offenses are also affected somewhat. But more data is needed. Still, if the ballpark is driving down runs in someway, maybe not having home field advantage throughout he playoffs is a good thing.