Park Factors

As everyone knows, no two parks play the same, so ballpark factors play an important role in evaluating true talent and value.  The standard stat used for the factors are runs scored, and this is commonly used for value stats.  When determining team value, it doesn’t matter if a player is left or right-handed, or if it’s a home run friendly park or not.  If the player has a ballpark that suits his skills, his individual talent level may be overstated, but his value to the team is unchanged.  The L/R and HR factors are a couple of the many component factors, and these are used to determine an individual player’s true talent level.

Turner Field is a slight pitcher’s park, limiting doubles and home runs, hence the photo above.  LHH seem to have a bit of a disadvantage for singles, causing a slightly lower wOBA factor than righties.  Here are the specific factors for the park on the Statcorner site.  100 is neutral, with higher numbers being hitter-friendly and vice versa.

For your general value park factor, the wOBA factors can be weighted to get a specific number.  I do not know what the GB, OF, IF, and LD factors are measuring, and I have no clue what would cause such a spike in HBP.  The walk and strikeout numbers are usually correlated with the amount of foul territory.  Since Turner doesn’t have much foul room, fewer outs are made there and more walks and strikeouts occur.  I focus mostly on the four hit types and the wOBA factor.

There are no extreme advantages or disadvantages of playing at Turner Field.  The 10% loss of doubles seems significant, but if the best players only hit 40 doubles a year, it’s at most 8 total bases, costing only about 12-15 points in SLG%.  Colorado is the best hitter’s park, boosting wOBA by about 10%, which means a hitter needs a .350 wOBA to be considered average, instead of the average .320 figure.  On the other end, San Diego decreases wOBA by 9%, so a hitter only needs a .290 wOBA to be considered average.

Obviously, these are not the only park factors out there.  Baseball-Reference puts Turner at a 99 runs rating, so they are very similar.  Another great feature of Statcorner is the minor league park factor database, extending all the way to A ball.  Unlike the other statistical posts, I won’t be doing any Braves since everyone on the team was around last year.  When looking at possible trade candidates, park factors should be part of the analysis, making sure a player’s totals aren’t inflated by his ballpark.