Evaluating the Tigers through a Sabermetric lens

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Messing With Park Factors

Last night, for reasons I still don't know, my mind wandered while driving home from a friend's apartment towards baseball and park factors. I've always wondered why we only use a players home park as the park factor by which to adjust his offensive or pitching performance. After all, baseball teams spend half of their season on the road so it would stand to reason that one would look at both a home and road park factor, no?

In the absence of actually sleeping, I decided to goof around in Excel for a bit, as I'm known to do. I took the 2B/3B and HR park factors from StatCorner, and decided to perform a lazy-man's park adjustment to Miguel Cabrera's 2013 season. I should note that I used only park factors for right-handed hitters as Cabrera is a right-handed hitter so there's no need for me to worry about how Miami's Taxpayers Dicked Over stadium treats LHB's.