Mile High Stadium Park Metrics

[Trav876]

If anyone is curious, I did a little project trying to find as accurate as possible Park Metrics for the Real Life Mile High Stadium, hoooome of YOOOUUR COLORADO ROCKIES (in an Alan Roach voice... iykyk).

There's nothing I can find online that has any park factors for Mile High. Probably because it wasn't a thing back then, and they only played there from 1993-1994, before moving to Coors Field (but by all means, if you can find some, please let me know!)

In OOTP, Mile High imports kind of... as a ... pitchers park? Lefty HRs are way down, and there are some other metrics that seem off. Rockies have NEVER been at a pitcher friendly altitude, and the real life numbers in 1993 at Mile High Stadium show the same thing.

So, here's my reasoning & math (skip to the bottom line if you just want the metrics, but hopefully how I came up with them is accurate).

-----------------

At first, I thought if you just take the total number of HR, 3B, 2B, hits/batting avg. at Mile High, and compared them to the MLB average for 1993, that would give us an accurate estimate. But, problem is, what if Rockies just had bad pitching (they did), and so in general, HRs for example would have been UP anyway, even if the park had been neutral? That could exaggerate it quite a bit. When I first did this math, I ended up with
-1993 Rockies hit 77 HR at home... gave up 107 HR at home... that comes out to 2.27 HR per game given up at Mile High (184 HR / 81 home games)
-1993 League Average was .89 HR per game
-That gives a park factor of 1.551x. Hmm...that's a lot. But certainly possible.

-Same math done for Batting Average, 2Bs, and 3Bs ... which ended up at 1.158 for Average, 1.29 for 2Bs, and 5.000 for triples! You read that right. Rockies as a team hit 48 Triples(!) at home, and gave up 37(!). Those are both astounding numbers. This leads to 1.049 triples per game, at Mile High Stadium. Yes, if you went to a Rockies game in 1993, chances are, you were going to see a triple. Compare this to the league average of .21 triples per game (i.e., one every 5 games), and you get an insane park metric.

Now, similar to the point I made above, what if the Rockies were a team that was good at hitting triples (they did have some speed), combined with their pitchers not being very good (which was also true)... this could skew the numbers at Mile High to make it seem like more of a "triples park" than if say, the Rockies DIDN'T have speedy players, and had good pitching.

So, because of this, I took a different route. I compared apples to apples. Rockies Pitchers AT HOME vs. ON THE ROAD, for all these metrics... AND, Rockies Hitters AT HOME vs. ON THE ROAD, for all these metrics. I ended up getting similar metrics in some areas, and quite different (seemingly, more realistic) metrics in others, such as triples.

-1993 Rockies Hit 20% more HR at home than on road (1.200)
-1993 Rockies hit 31.7% more 2B at home than on road (1.317x)
-1993 Rockies hit 3.364x more 3B at home than on road (3.364x)
-.306 BA at home vs. .240 on road* (1.275x)

*The Rockies have traditionally...every year... been the WORST team when it comes to home & road batting average splits. They now call this the Coors Field hangover- because you go down to sea level, and all of the sudden the ball moves as quick as a snapping turtle, but when at home, it's flat as...well, your middle school girlfriend.

So, we MUST also take in account the Rockies pitchers!
-44.6% more HR allowed at home, than on road (1.446x)
-2.9% more 2B allowed at home, than on road (1.029x)
-100.176% more 3B allowed at home, than on road (2.176x)
-.279 BA against on road, vs. .308 BA at home (1.104x)

So what I did then was average these two together, to get hopefully an accurate park metric for Mile High Stadium. Now, with the splits between lefties & righties in OOTP (i.e. HR park factors for Lefties, different than HR park factors for Righties), what I did was enter the proper dimensions into the game (it actually had them pretty spot on, except for the wall height, which I had to do some research on), and then hit "auto calculate" to see what percentage difference there is between Lefties & Righties in batting avg and HRs.

It was tough to find, but after some reading/research and looking at pictures, Mile High Stadium had a 30 FOOT(!) FENCE in Center Field (I don't remember this, but confirmed with seeing some pictures), that went all the way around past right center. This would definitely make it harder to hit jacks to CF, of course.

The math showed Righties had a 44% more chance of hitting a HR, than Lefties (which makes sense, with the shorter porch in right, and the lower wall). But batting averages were the same.

So, what I was left with, was:
Average Overall: 1.190 (same w/ lefties & righties)
Doubles: 1.173
Triples: 2.770
Home Runs Overall: 1.323
*Lefties, 1.025 ... Righties, 1.484... this gives the 44% difference that the game autocalculated after I entered the dimensions, but before entering the Park Metrics

This all seems fairly accurate. I do recall hearing the biggest difference between Mile High & Coors Field, is that Coors allows lots more "hits" due to being so big, but Mile High probably allowed a lot more HRs, since it was smaller, especially to LF. And the big RF- combined with big wall in CF-RF makes sense as far as triples would go.

[Pelican]

Amazing work. It all makes sense, although the number of triples really is astounding. But it's the same reason there were far more triples during the Dead Ball Era = huge ballparks with giant outfields. The ball could roll around for a long time. Heck, most of the home runs were inside-the-park. I'll bet Mile High had a few of those, as well, probably to RF.

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by Pelican

Amazing work. It all makes sense, although the number of triples really is astounding. But it's the same reason there were far more triples during the Dead Ball Era = huge ballparks with giant outfields. The ball could roll around for a long time. Heck, most of the home runs were inside-the-park. I'll bet Mile High had a few of those, as well, probably to RF.

It's funny, I just today pulled up a 1993 Rockies game from YouTube to listen to/watch in the background, and there were like 4 triples hit that game. 2 alone by Vinny Castilla (Cubs v. Rockies, 4/26/93)