[Malleus Dei]

I hope that you all had a Merry Christmas.

This discussion is, frankly, appalling.

I'm LOLing at LGO's inappropriate use of statistics yet again. Earl Weaver complained about being hosed by home field advantage due to teams like the Royals taking significant advantage of tailoring their team to their home stadiums in WEAVER ON STRATEGY, but of course you had to have read it to know that (it's available for really cheap on Amazon; if you play OOTP, go buy a copy).

Bill James has not only discussed this issue on numerous occasions (for example, in his collected work THIS TIME LET'S NOT EAT THE BONES he mentions that the Yankees' winning years correspond precisely with the years when they tailor their team to their park) but his knowledge of how to tailor a team to a particular park is attributed to be one of the reasons for the recent Red Sox resurgence.

The Dodgers and Mets have publicly admitted to tailoring theirs team to their parks, the Mets doing it based on park factors. There is little doubt that other teams do this as well, but don't talk about it much.

None of this, of course, will mean anything to anyone if they hasn't bothered read the seminal/definitive works on baseball analysis and strategy and if their mind is already cast in concrete.

Which is why I am leaving this discussion with a message: read more.

LGO, you make really fine schedules.

I hope that eveyone has a nice New Year.