Why are the Giants so bad at home?
by Cynema the Band on Jun 27, 2008 1:44 PM PDT
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PrintPlease forgive me if this has already been discussed, but why are they so bad at home? I was reading the preview of tonights game on ESPN and saw that the Giants are .500 on the road, which for this team is great, but they are 10 games under .500 at home. With the Phone Booth being a "Pitchers Park" and the Giants pitching being pretty good (and even with their inadequacies with some of the pitchers, see Zito) you would think that our yard would mask some of the flaws we have.
Or are they over-achieving on the road?
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You know, I’ve been interested in their splits but I wonder if it’s something as simple as they’ve played tougher teams at home? Maybe I’ll try and look into the numbers next week when I get some time.
Most of the vets do have pretty brutal home/road splits. Looking at just the OPS+ as a thumbnail
Rowand: .941 Road, .702 Home
Molina: .877 Road, .678 Home
Durham: .814 Road, .727 home
Aurilia .860 Road, .679 Home
Winn’s not bad but still .835 Road, .784 Home
That’s pretty much the heart of the order. On the bright side:
Fred Lewis, .733 Road, .933 Home. Freddie loves home cookin’
My boy ain't fat, he's just big boned. Big bat, too.
Pressing?
I think maybe they know the rep as a pitcher’s park and try a little too hard.
Rowand especially looks like’s pressing at home sometimes. Perhaps he’s pressuring himself to make fans feel he was worth the contract.
Durham and Aurilia might be pressing to erase fans memories of their 2007s.
Molina probably keeps his magical clutchy dust in his suitcase, so it only comes out on road trips. Actually, I think Benjie’s a good example of a guy who’s got power in some parks, but not enough for ours.
2008 Giants: Scrappy! Scrappy! Joy! Joy!
SACRILEGE
"he walked 18; new league record! Struck out 18, another new league record! He also hit the sportswriter, the PA announcer, the bull mascot twice..."
by i did my job on Jun 27, 2008 2:45 PM PDT up reply actions
It’s clearly because Matt Cain isn’t as good as we would all like to think he is.
I was THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME (for 3 days in 1995).
by Mike Benjamin Hit King on Jun 27, 2008 2:23 PM PDT reply actions
You should create a Fanpost for that topic!
Adopted brother of the AnVil / GIANTSPACE™ returns!
by SoFa King Mike on Jun 27, 2008 2:28 PM PDT up reply actions
No Bonds, no offense
Proud adopted parent of future big league slugger Thomas Neal
by nostocksjustbonds on Jun 27, 2008 2:40 PM PDT reply actions
Hilarious. I was going to do the polite golf clap, but this is greater than that.
DFA all Giants over 34 years old.
by Mayor of 311 on Jun 27, 2008 3:15 PM PDT up reply actions
I don't know. Maybe coincidence. BUT, may I just please say....
I want to smack the dumbasses on the radio and in the media who are saying that AT&T Park is such a difficult park. Horsecrap.
1. We have won division/league titles here, set home run records here, produced MORE THAN ONE league M.V.P. here (it wouldn’t kill jeff kent to remember once in awhile that he didn’t do it before or after being a Giant in PacBellPark).
2. I admit I haven’t checked in a couple of years, but the last time I looked at Bill James’s stuff, this park played nearly neutral. NEARLY, I said.
3. Every game held in AT&T Park does, in fact, produce a winner. No, no, it does—you can look that up. If both teams would regularly lose the same game, then it might show that teams cannot win in this park. Often it is the other team winning this year, but it does show that there’s nothing wrong with the park.
4. I haven’t personally measured the bases, but they appear to be pretty close to 90 feet apart, thus the general area of the infield is the same as other parks and the area just beyond it which is usually patrolled by infielders is the same as other parks. THEREFORE, many hits could be gotten by slaps, punches, liners, lasers, bloops, texas leaguers, and all manner of hits that do not go over the fence. Hitting over fences is not the only route to hitting in this or any park.
5. Whining about the park is inane.
Now, that’s not saying that we have the right horses for this track, but I think our team failings don’t have anything to do with this park, and let’s see those home/road splits at the end of the year.
DFA all Giants over 34 years old.
Well said
Kruk on one of his KNBR shows was asked about the bad home record and said that while it’s a difficult park in which to hit for power, that doesn’t mean (as you mentioned) you can’t do well by feasting on a meal of strategically placed doubles and triples in the alleys. FWIW, apparently Bochy has told the players he doesn’t want to hear any whining about the ballpark and what a difficult place it is to hit. Which still leaves him on the hook for batting Jose Castillo second.
Eagerly awaiting Crazy Crab Bobblehead Night on 7/18.
Very true. I don’t think AT&T is that much of a pitcher’s park. Just go look at 2000. The Park factor was like 93 or something which says its a pitchers park obviously. Yet Ellis Burks hit .344, Jeff Kent won MVP, JT Snow actually hit over 20 homers, Bonds hit 49. Yes there were guys on roids, but come on! People used to hit here.
I would expect a lower number of home runs, but I seem to remember guys like Doug Mirabelli legging out 3 or 4 triples a year just because the park has plenty of room in the gaps. It’s not like this is Petco. Or Comerica before they moved the fences in.
"JT Snow Actually hit over 20 homers"
In six years with the Giants at PacBell/AT&T, JT Snow hit 22 homeruns there. That’s less than four per season. During that same span he hit 35 HRs on the road.
If you’re talking about 2000 specifically, he hit 19 total, with 10 of them being at home. That was his only season where he hit more HRs at AT&T than on the road.
If you want to offer proof that AT&T is not a pitcher’s park, there are better places to look that JT Snow’s HR totals there.
2008 Giants: Scrappy! Scrappy! Joy! Joy!
Here’s a problem: our pitching isn’t that good. The Giants are 9th of 16 teams in runs allowed. That’s mediocre, no matter how incredibly awesome Lincecum is.
Here’s another problem: the team has actually pitched worse at home: 4.45 ERA at home, 4.22 ERA on the road. Is that fluky? Probably, and it may not hold true in the future, but add the worse pitching at home to the worse hitting at home, and that helps explain the poor home record.
Here’s something else: Home/Road Pitching Splits:
Road: 358.1 IP, 160 BB, 314 K
Home: 350 IP, 160 BB, 282 K
Why the lower K rate at home? I haven’t dug deep enough to be sure, and it might just be that Lincecum/Sanchez/Cain have had more road starts. Still, it might be that the pitchers are attempting to “pitch to contact” (aka Strategy of FAIL) at home because they feel they have less to worry about at AT&T than on the road.
Or it could just be fluky. Who knows.
by North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan on Jun 27, 2008 4:11 PM PDT up reply actions
the pitching hasn't been good.
I think that we’ve allowed the most walks.
you can't block the Bocock
Almost
NL BB:
322 Pittsburgh
320 SF
318 Florida
by North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan on Jun 27, 2008 4:24 PM PDT up reply actions
I should also point out that SF is 2nd in K (CIN is #1), while FLA is 11th and PIT is dead last. Most BB + fewest K = fail. To be fair, though, Pittsburgh has a much better offense than SF does.
by North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan on Jun 27, 2008 4:33 PM PDT up reply actions
Oh I did NOT say that we have a worse pitching staff than those two (gah) pitching staffs.
You just aren’t that good if you issue that many walks.
you can't block the Bocock
Oh no, I didn’t think you were saying that. I was just throwing those numbers out there for people.
by North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan on Jun 27, 2008 5:14 PM PDT up reply actions
Our home/road split is because of our schedule
Our home games include:
- A very good Oakland team who was playing hot.
- White Sox in the middle of their hot stretch.
- Tigers during their first good stretch of the year.
- Houston during Lance Berkman’s inhuman streak.
Our road games:
- 4 games vs the awful nationals with loads of injuries.
- Slumping indians team
- Diamondbacks at the start of their current slump
- Padres when it looked like they might lose 110 games.
And without doing any research it also seems have had much better luck dodging opposing aces on our road trips compared to at AT&T.
I know how we could win more at home
Now it probably wouldn’t work because our offense stinks, but….
Maybe they should consider moving all home starts to 5 or 6 PM, and make use of the shadows. Nobody is going to hit our pitchers that way. Hell it might even give Zito a puncher’s chance to last until the 5th or 6th inning.
Granted we won’t be facing Harden anymore, so this might actually give us a chance to win some games. We used to water down the baseline by first to keep Maury Wills from getting great jumps. And teams use other advantages like grass length and whether to have their dome open or not (Arizona) etc. Might as well take advantage of the ridiculous shadows that the park gets at that time.
Who is going to be able to get off work and to the game by 5 or 6pm? Yeah, it works for day games somehow, but not every day.
by North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan on Jun 27, 2008 5:13 PM PDT up reply actions
Since I work downtown, 6pm starts would be totally rad…except for game when I have to go back home to get Goofus Jr.
The giants should consult with me on all start times.
2008 Giants: Scrappy! Scrappy! Joy! Joy!
I used to work at 3rd and Howard, so that would have been SWEET for me.
by North Side Chicago Expatriate Giants Fan on Jun 27, 2008 5:36 PM PDT up reply actions
Small sample
I think the Giants are playing better on the road than at home because we’re dealing with a small sample and such aberrations are more likely to happen in small samples.
Just because the Giants have played better on the road than at home, do you truly expect them to play better on the road than at home the rest of the way? They might, but I would bet against it.
It's unpossible to prove...
... but it may just be the jitters. Take a bunch of young players on the road and the expectations are less. They play looser. Good things happen.
Bring ‘em home and they play tight because the whole organization is watching. The veterans catch the vibe and try to do more to make up for it = fail. We don’t have those kind of veterans.
Except Yabu who once cleared an entire broad mountain valley of armed samurai with just a shopping cart full of BP balls. Do you not see that I am serious?
Fred Lewis can stand under my umbrella.
Yabu is apparantly still throwing those BP balls...
Eugeniooooooo!!!!
by FairweatherFan on Jun 28, 2008 4:07 PM PDT up reply actions
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