THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tom, sorry to hijack, but was reading RJ’s post on the Metrodome at TMI and figured I could get an estimate park factor on the New Metrodome.  The main number I am missing is the amount of foul territory.  Does anyone know that amount?

I think KJOK, Patriot, or MGL might be able to help you there.

Jeff #1:

I am working on foul territory area numbers for all 30 parks plus the recently closed ones right now, but haven’t done Target Field and the Metrodome yet.

However, glancing at overlays of the two parks, it is apparent that Target Field has considerably less area than the Metrodome. 

I’m not sure if you have a number for the new Yankee Stadium, but it looks like Target Field has a little bit more area than Yankee Stadium does.  They are very similar on the right side, and on the left side, Target has a bit less area behind the plate, but more foul territory about halfway down the LF line.

Hope that helps.

Ack, Greg should have been in my recommended list.  Serves me right for trying to list names…

#3/ Greg—I have a list from MGL previously.  They are seen in this article:

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/12/17/695875/what-factors-have-an-effec

I can send you the spreadsheet if you need it.

I think people still are underestimating the weather effect of the new stadium being outdoors. Fly balls are probably going to die in April and September.

Jeff, I’d of course love to have the spreadsheet, can you send it to my email on my name?

If MGL is around, how did you calculate the foul territory areas?  I am using this little tool for the outdoor parks: (I think I got somewhat less than the 40K ft^2 you got for Oakland, mine was in the 37-38K range, I haven’t got it in front of me...)

http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculator-tool.htm

For the indoor ones or ones with no overhead imagery yet I will have to do it the hard way (sigh)

#6—The stadium in Milwaukee averaged a temperature 2.5 degrees higher than Minnesota at game time over the entire season.

72 degrees vs 69.5 degrees. 

#7 Sent - I had a link to download the spreadsheet and I will try to get it back up and working.

Jeff,

I did a weather analysis of sorts for Target Field for the Hardball Times Annual this year, and what I got was that in aggregate, the game time temperatures at Target Field are going to be a bit cooler than they were inside the Metrodome.  The cooler Spring and Sept./Oct. games outweigh the warmer July & August games by a bit.

The data you have for Milwaukee may be biased by the roof being closed for most early games - they don’t heat Miller Park, but it still stays in the 50’s or 60’s no matter how cold outside… was this temperature data for Miller Park or prior data from County Stadium?

Arg. Left field at the Metrodome is very similar to left field at Target Field. The 385 the Metrodome has listed is a lie for what is assumed to be the traditional power alley.

I’ve guestimated the amount of foul territory at Target Field to be two-thirds the amount the Metrodome has. This was based partially of eye-balling the two and investigating every foul out the Metrodome had over the past three years.

Greg/9:

Did you do a wind analysis as well? I did one, but did the averaging wrong so the results are mostly worthless.

#9 Greg - Thanks for the info, guess I better break out the annual, a real paper book, and do a little reading.

My data was only for Miller Park

I tried to do wind analysis, but the Retrosheet wind data is messed up so basically useless.

When collecting this data, I found there was no wind blowing in form right field and I thought I had made a mistake somewhere. I searched on the games database for hat wind direction and the most last time it happened was in 2003.

No, no wind analysis, I had some data but I think the layout of the park is likely to induce some localized wind patterns, so I didn’t want to try to make any predictions.  Once we see some games, we’ll have a better idea, I expect.