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Sunday, June 01, 2008
Why is the HFA so high this year?
I did not realize it was until I read this article on ESPN.com. In it, Buster Olney takes on the question as to why the home teams are winning at a .577 clip so far this year (as of May 29, according to Olney).
In the article, Olney says, according to several GM’s, players, managers and scouts, it might because of the “influx of young players” who are more familiar with their home environments, or perhaps even party on the road, more so than the average player I guess.
As I said, I hadn’t even noticed that home teams are winning at such a high rate so far this year, and normally I wouldn’t think anything of it anyway. But given the sample size, the difference between this year and what is typical (around 53-54%) is greater than 2 SD, enough to raise an eyebrow or two. Plus, there are a lot of weird things going on in baseball so far this year (well, at least one weird thing, which is the low run scoring and especially HR rate in the AL).
Anyway, the “young players” explanation seems a little silly to me on its face. I mean how many extra young players would it take to make such a difference?
Not one to accept anything at face value, especially that which “scouts, managers, GM’s, and players” posit, I looked at the average age and distribution of ages of pitchers and batters so far this year as compared to last year at the same time (thru May 29). Each age is prorated by the number of PA or TBF. The distribution of ages is percentage of total PA or TBF. Here is what I found:
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