Ask Rotoman: USATODAY.com – Consider San Juan effect with Expos
I was doing some writing about park effects and just noticed that Hiram Bithorn Stadium, the ballpark in San Juan the Expos played in part time the last two years, was the worst ballpark for hitters in the National League for both of them.
This is absolutely worthless info, since no major leaguers will be playing there this year. But I was reminded that a lot of prognosticators thought the Expos would hit like crazy in this “bandbox.” Well, it turns out they were wrong, and I was a little bit right (I certainly didn’t predict it would so favor pitchers), and we should all be careful about our assumptions.
BTW, I don’t think the Expos played enough games there either year to skew the stats of individual players too much, but if you’re thinking of loading up on Expos starters it wouldn’t hurt to see how they did at Olympic Stadium alone. It has been playing as a middle of the pack park, which is what is expected of RFK Stadium in Washington.
It’s kind of interesting – the numbers are small – but last year their pitchers were pretty much pounded there. The only ones with any real ip that were better in Bithorn were guys like Kim and Vargas who were putrid both places.
Even guys like Cordero or Livan who did OK there, were better or much better in the Stade.
The hitters were pretty uniformly worse…but not exactly a hall of fame class there and the only “good” if we can use the term hitters (Wilkerson? Vidro? Cabrera?) had injury issues during that long stretch at the beginning when they played there….
I’m pretty unimpressed with pundits who on the one hand say, wait until it gets hot and the ball will fly on the one hand, and on the other hand say it gets so hot in Puerto Rico in August they won’t be able to hit….
Exhibit #43 in the why I hate park effects file.
The park dimensions at HB changed dramatically from 2003 to 2004 — it was such a bandbox in 2003 that they pushed back the walls something like 60 feet. Google for it.