Worksheet for Quadratic Ballpark Factors

[Garlon]

This is an excel worksheet that will provide the quadratic ballpark factors for any league and any season since 1871. If you want you can also add your own data for other leagues too. If you want to add a new league you will need the total AB, H, BB, Total Bases to create your own rows, but when you do this you need to pull down the formulas in. columns AE through AQ for the calculator to work, or you can simply type over the existing rows with new statistics and that will work too.

You will put a park run scoring factor into column AI, which is labeled 3-yr PF Runs. For this column, 100 is average. Your output will then be in column AQ labeled Park Factor Hits and HR factor. This factor only gets applied to the OOTP BA and HR park factors, so you will need to leave 2B and 3B at 1.000.

For example, on Retrosheet you can get the ballpark run factors. In 1990 Yankee Stadium was 0.945. You need to multiply this by 100 for the worksheet, so your input will be 0.945*100 = 94.5. You then go to the 1990 AL row and then type 94.5 into column AI and then after you press enter you will see that column AQ changes to 0.966841, so round this to 0.967.

So your 1990 Yankee Stadium quadratic ballpark factors are
BA: 0.967
2B: 1.000
3B: 1.000
HR: 0.967

If you want to do a 3yr ballpark factor, as the column is labeled, we look at the 1989, 1990, and 1991 Yankee Stadium park run factors and average them. These are 1.121, 0.945, and 1.029. If we add them and divide by 3 we get 3.095/3 = 1.032. Then multiply this by 100 to get 1.032*100 = 103.2. You then type this value into column AI for 1990 AL and your column AQ will be 1.019.

So the 1990 Yankee Stadium 3yr quadratic ballpark factors are:
BA: 1.019
2B: 1.000
3B: 1.000
HR: 1.019

If you are playing a replay season and want 1yr park factors you can use this worksheet, or if you are playing an entirely different league but have the historical values you can use this to produce park factors that are designed to reproduce the scoring environment of that stadium in that particular season.

If you are using this for historical major league season then you need to use the retrosheet factors, not the baseball reference factors, for best results.

Maybe some of you will find this useful for your games.

[Brad K]

Is this the same formula used to create the current era_ballparks file?

What is the data source for the era_ballparks file?

Thank you for all your work on the game.

[Garlon]

This same calculator was used for the era_stats file but I realized when I originally made that file I probably made 5yr park factors so I am considering starting over with 3yr factors and making a new file.

[Brad K]

I think I'm not involved with era_stats because I'm using real stats and the game provided era_ballparks file. Is that right?

[Brad K]

The ballpark editor has fields for both L and R values for BA and HR. The era_ballparks file has a field in each case only for combined value. So if different value for each is entered in the ballpark editor, where are these values stored? And are they accessible?

[Garlon]

I meant to say era_ballparks, not the era_stats file.

There is no way to have OOTP currently import the L and R values even though the game supports this. The new discrete file I made has those values, but the game needs to be updated to support that file. I was thinking that I could put both the quadratic and the discrete factors in a single file and then maybe we could get the game to support either one for the user by selecting "normalized park factors" which are the quadratic version, or "discrete park factors" which are built from the actual BABIP/2B/3B/HR statistics for Bats L and Bats R, but the game needs to be programmed to know how to import from the new file and the game needs to support park factors that are currently outside the range of what OOTP permits.

[HumanRainDelay]

This took lots of thought. Thanks for making it available to us, Garlon.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Garlon

I meant to say era_ballparks, not the era_stats file.

There is no way to have OOTP currently import the L and R values even though the game supports this. The new discrete file I made has those values, but the game needs to be updated to support that file. I was thinking that I could put both the quadratic and the discrete factors in a single file and then maybe we could get the game to support either one for the user by selecting "normalized park factors" which are the quadratic version, or "discrete park factors" which are built from the actual BABIP/2B/3B/HR statistics for Bats L and Bats R, but the game needs to be programmed to know how to import from the new file and the game needs to support park factors that are currently outside the range of what OOTP permits.

Reminds me of years ago editing the scenario files for Gary Grigsby's Pacific War then realizing I couldn't fix some stuff without being able to edit the exe.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by HumanRainDelay

This took lots of thought. Thanks for making it available to us, Garlon.

Ditto! Thanks, Garlon!