Guaranteed Rate Field is a weird place to hit
Well before Tom Tango rose to the level of Senior Database Architect for MLB Advanced Media, he established his own site in which he explores baseball’s critical measurements. One recent example involves Wins Above Replacement. Tango has recently come up with CoreWAR and has two simple formulas to calculate a pitcher or non-pitcher’s WAR.
While reading the breakdown of how Tango came to these formulas, I’m drawn to park factors. Whenever I use a metric, whether WAR or wRC+/OPS+, I assume the ballpark tweaks the final result. We all know that pitching at Coors Field is much different than doing so at whatever Oakland Coliseum is called now.
Tango wrote about Coors Field’s park factor, leading me down the rabbit hole at Baseball Savant. Tango and his team have built a page where anyone can look up a stadium’s park factors on various metrics. It’s a convenient resource to compare and contrast how each stadium’s environment has played over the years with data tracking back to the 1999 season. Using a three-year rolling average, it’s no shocker that Coors Field is still the most hitter-friendly ballpark. It’s also no surprise that Oakland and San Francisco are the most pitcher-friendly.
Right smack-dab in the middle is Guaranteed Rate Field.
The perception is that Guaranteed Rate Field is a hitter’s paradise, but it’s mainly true in just one regard: home run park factors. Coors Field, surprisingly, ranks fifth in Home Run Park Factor. The most home run-friendly ballpark is in Cincinnati at Great American Ballpark. They are followed by Camden Yards in Baltimore, which gives them the American League crown. Perhaps it’s a reason why the Orioles have decided to push back the fences in left field.
Dodger Stadium follows Camden Yards in third place, followed by Guaranteed Rate Field in fourth. As Jim hinted about in Tuesday’s Spare Parts, suppose the Orioles get their desired effect of reducing home runs hit. In that case, the White Sox could very well take the crown in 2022 as having the American League’s most friendly home run park.
Since the 2000 season, there have been 4,450 home runs hit at Comiskey Field/U.S. Cellular/Guaranteed Rate Field in 132,110 plate appearances, or 3.36 HR per 100 PA. In 2021, that rate was 3.65 HR per 100 PA.
Here is where my confusion lies: How can a ballpark that is most home run friendly in the American League have a neutral factor for hitters and pitchers? Wouldn’t this launchpad be a haven for run producers and a nightmare for pitchers?
Break down the other batted ball results, and Guaranteed Rate Field behaves much differently. Out of 29 stadiums (Texas is playing in a new stadium and doesn’t count as of this writing), you’ll need to look towards the bottom to find Guaranteed Rate Field.
Park Factors (2019 – 2021)
- Singles: 94 park factor, 28th in MLB
- Doubles: 83 park factor, 29th in MLB
- Triples: 49 park factor, 27th in MLB
While I thought this was a revelation, it isn’t. Looking at the past 21 seasons, Guaranteed Rate Field only tilted to the hitter’s advantage for doubles three times (2004, 2010, and 2012), singles just five times (2002, 2004, 2007, 2012, and 2018), and triples just once (2000). That’s how one of the most homer-friendly ballparks in major league baseball is a neutral environment.
Compared to Coors Field:
- Singles: 116 park factor, 1st in MLB
- Doubles: 120 park factor, 3rd in MLB
- Triples: 220 park factor, 2nd in MLB
Knowing how the home ballpark has been played for two decades makes me wonder if this data should greatly influence the White Sox roster-building. It makes sense that the White Sox have been focused on finding groundball specialists out of the bullpen like recent signee Kendall Graveman. Suppose a pitcher like Graveman can limit the number of fly balls hit. In that case, theoretically, he should find success pitching at home. The ballpark advantage is on his side.
Vice versa looking at the White Sox lineup, if there were one batter to clone, it would be Yasmani Grandal. While Guaranteed Rate Field is not an advantage for a non-home run batted ball results, it’s one of the most friendly to draw walks in ranking third in MLB. Grandal hit 14 home runs at Guaranteed Rate Field in 2021, which accounted for 40% of his total hits at the ballpark. It’s a player/ballpark match made in baseball heaven.
Coming up for air after climbing down the rabbit hole, my perception of the White Sox home environment has changed. Once, I thought it was a hitters haven; now I see Guaranteed Rate Field as a weird place to hit. Great for home runs, but not much else. Truly one of a kind.
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The whitesox inability to hit homers and odd roster construction post 2006 to solve that problem has always baffled me. Its like they didnt want a home field advantage. Good to see this current team with a nice amount of power, but if they add another 30-40 homers out of their open spots in RF and 2nd I think the offense goes to the next level.
Makes TA’s 3-year stretch look even more interesting and weird. If he was somewhere else, would he have been hitting .340 with very few homers? Also makes the beat-the-ball-into-the-ground approach we’ve seen in recent years look even worse.
Does the analysis of these single/double/triple factors try to explain why the production of non-HRs is down so much? Something about the grass? The basically standard/symmetrical dimensions with no weird wall cutouts anywhere? General smallness of the outfield? What would cause this weirdness?
I would guess you’re spot on for doubles and triples. It just isn’t all that easy to lose a ball in the RF corner.
For singles, I would credit Roger B–lots of true bounces in the infield and very few slips on wet grass. I wonder if the official scorekeeper also has a big impact on the singles factor. If we have the same person for several years (not sure how that office is staffed) and they tend to lean more toward calling something an error, they could be suppressing the singles rate.
Is it good for drawing walks because it is good for hitting homers? That is to say, are pitchers less willing to throw strikes because those strikes are more likely to become HRs?
Or is there something else going on?
Prior to two seasons ago there was something bordering on institutional disdain for framing, and even since then there’s the Zack Collins effect.
Not a lot of foul territory, which helps extend at-bats.
The White Sox are a weird franchise so it fits.
It’s pretty remarkable how unfriendly Sox Park is to balls hit into the outfield given the team has employed some of the most godawful defensive players around over the last several years. Engel and Robert can only make up for so much of that.
Interesting stuff. It also forced me to reconsider one of my assumptions, which was that Sox Park became more homer-friendly after both the 2001 renovation to more the bullpens and bring in the fences and the 2004 renovation to remove the top part of the upper deck. Your chart of PAs per HR by year doesn’t support that belief.
And a lot of the homers are hit in June, July, and August. It plays like two different parks depending on the time of year. Strange park.
Both the high home run factor and low everything else factor are a result of a small outfield. It’s easier to hit balls over the fence, but that also means less room in the outfield for hits to fall. It also probably means that slower sluggers sometimes have to pull up with long singles off the wall. The outfield wall also lacks the weird angles/nooks/crannies that produce a lot of triples in particular in many other parks.
The high walk factor is interesting though; it might be a reflection of White Sox personnel and Coop’s old emphasis on throwing strikes, or of the relatively small area of foul ground, but it might also imply that hitters have good visibility at the Rate (from the batter’s eye/background). It can really change park to park; Willy Adames said repeatedly that he couldn’t see the ball in Tampa very well at all.