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Thursday, July 27, 2006
Colorado Park Factor
Here is Dan Fox looking at park factors, for the minor league Colorado team.
The park configuration also plays a role. I once did a(n unpublished) study on the park configuration, and…
found a relationship between distance and runs. I can’t remember what it was.. something like every 10 feet added, increased run production by 1%, or .01 runs per game. I can’t remember which, so don’t quote me.
The key was to figure out the amount of surface area. Using the 5 distance markers (LF, alley, CF, alley, RF), I squared the values, averaged them, and took the square root. That gave me a smoothed out radius for the field. Pretty basic, right? Since the area of the field is pi * r-squared / 4 (if it was a slice of a perfect circle), I was on my way.
Of course, not all fields are even close to being that nicely shaped. Since we do have access to graphical representation of all the parks, we don’t even need to figure out a mathematical representation of them: just count the pixels on the screen. Until then…