Ballpark effects as GM - Strategies?

lightgrenade07 · 01-19-2016, 12:46 PM

How much does your ballpark affect the makeup of the roster you put together? Do you build a roster that can play to its strengths (ie lots of power hitters in an HR friendly park, focus on pitching in a pitcher friendly park) or do you build a team to compensate (eg bring the best pitchers you can to a hitters park)? Does it matter?

Kent814 · 01-19-2016, 02:57 PM

I always play to our stregths bcuz u play 81 home gms in the same stadium while the 81 road games ought to have some stadiums similar to yours so that's like 100 games in a certain type of stadium with a team fitted for that stadium

PSUColonel · 01-19-2016, 03:33 PM

I've always felt you should "defend" your ballpark strengths. So if you have key in a bandbox...pitching should be your priority..if you play in a pitchers park...offense should be your key (OBP & speed)

NoOne · 01-19-2016, 05:11 PM

another perspective:

a fairly neutral park, which allows you to take advantage of accumulating the best talent available with less worry about them matching your park. also, you limit the max difference between your team's makeup and all road ballparks' factors and the types of teams they might favor.

it's always a breakeven analysis of multiple factors when it comes to this question. how much do you gain at home and how much will you lose while away? also, each league could be different with random parks and distribution of park factors within the league. each factor would require it's own research.

what's cool about this game is you can set it up and find out for sure. no matter how logical something sounds, it must be verified with objective fact to be true. of course it only proves it for the game. so, no worries. real life baseball will continue to be debateable with current tools/info.

you'll need a ton of years to be confident, but you could categorize each team's makeup, then adjust all parks to a specific set of factors, collect the data and analyze the data making use of basic spreadhseet functions. rinse and repeat with different types of ballparks.

you could make the teams according to a spec, but i wouldn't change too many teams or the environment will not be consistent with your league and the results will be too tainted. that state of your league needs to be considered, too. e.g. is current talent in an ebb or flow process?

instead of individually editting the parks in game, it's probably quicker to edit txt files if they exist, or export one and import to each etc... maybe even just copying and renaming a file over again will save a lot of time and effort.

RchW · 01-19-2016, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I've always felt you should "defend" your ballpark strengths. So if you have key in a bandbox...pitching should be your priority..if you play in a pitchers park...offense should be your key (OBP & speed)

Hmmm in an offensive park I'd load up with big bats and take my chances.

Edit

OTOH if I had a spacious park pitching would be the priority a la KCR recently.

Bottom line is that overall talent will overcome any park issues with the exception of Colorado and maybe San Diego. It would be silly to pass up any single player because of that.

lightgrenade07 · 01-19-2016, 05:56 PM

Thanks, everybody! This is a lot to chew on.

Mostly I'm approaching this from a player development angle. Right now, I have a ballpark with standard dimensions and average double-triple-HR ratings (all between .985 and 1.015), but low average (.937 lhb, .946 rhb). I figure it's an average park with a really large foul area. Do I focus on power, patience and ground balls, then?

ThePretender · 01-19-2016, 08:31 PM

Better off building to win in any park as opposed to just one. I know you play more games in your park, but I've never agreed that it's smart to build for your park. I'm still building a team that'll hit for power whether I'm in Coors or Petco, because if I have more power than my opponent, I'll hit for more HR and win more games even in a park that suppresses HR.

My team's are going to have high defence, high obp/slugging, and high K/lowBB/high movement regardless of where I play, so I've never seen the point behind building to a park. Build to win 162 games, not 81.

Acquiring good players is the better strategy, as opposed to acquiring guys who fit in your park.

Bluenoser · 01-19-2016, 08:38 PM

Ask yourself this - My team plays home games in a pitcher friendly park. I have a chance to sign one of baseball's top power guys at an affordable price.

Do I:

A. Sign him

B. Say nope, can't use ya, it's a pitchers park

?

Sign the best players you can afford, damn the torpedoes, win state, go MoJo, all that stuff

NoOne · 01-20-2016, 02:40 AM

if they hit well and have power, no one is passing them up, unless they have better or already have as many power hitters as they can afford. era, budget and availability doesn't always allow it to happen.

if someone adheres to their perception so strongly that they pass that up without good reason, there's nothing anyone can do for that person. just let them enjoy not winning as much as they could

just because a player fits your park, doesn't mean that the gain will outweigh any talent difference possible.

the totals are easy to prove that a slugging team scores more runs over time (more complicated than just slugging, so fill-in what you need to agree with that, lol). what i'd be curious about is consistency.

a team averages 5 runs a game - pretty good. 816 runs.

60 of them came from 3 games because their power hitters all went off at the same time.

816-60 = 756; 756/159= 4.7547runs a game instead of 5.

does a power hitting team have runs that are more clumped up than other styles of play? i think it adds a higher risk/higher reward element to the equation, but i could be wrong.

at some point scoring X runs will trump whatever volatility differences there are. e.g. if your team scores > 1000 runs (maybe), it's not going to matter much if a greater proportion of games have **significantly** elevated runs scored. even the valleys will be a high average relative to other teams.

mpbaseball22 · 01-20-2016, 08:27 AM

I think its more important to look at handedness. Example. the Indians park in my game has a HR as L factor of 1.070 and as R its only .750. This means that I should get as many lefty hitters as possible, AND as many lefty pitchers as possible. Lefties are a strength in this park so you want to take be effective against them as pitchers and be able to hit a bunch of HR to the small side of the park with lefty hitters.

jlech1805 · 01-20-2016, 11:55 AM

I had said this in a thread about 2 weeks back and think it applies here too:

I've done this before and had some moderate success, but it never really seems worth it.

You can look at real world examples of the Rockies struggling to build consistent contenders or Padres and Marines having to move in their fences to become more neutral.

Imagine you have a completely average team. You'd expect to win about 38 games on the road and 43 at home.

If you need 90 wins as a minimum to make the playoffs you'd have to go 52-29 at home assuming the road wins stay the same.

You'd essentially have to create 9 wins over half a season, or double Mike Trout.

If you make a park extreme enough I think you can start to squeeze out advantages.

Another way is to exploit a perceived market inefficiency. Power has traditionally been the most expensive asset to buy on the market. If you play in a park where HRs are say .7 or lower you could benefit financially in this aspect. It would mean you'd want a really young team as speed and defense decline immediately while power increases and then plateaus.

Still overall I don't think it is worth it.

Padreman · 01-20-2016, 01:27 PM

I was signing big time bats and year after year they need performed prior to be signing them (me playing home games at Petco) I was getting frustrated. Then what will really piss me off I will not re-sign him again because I wasn't happy with them then they go back to playing how they we then what will really piss me off I will not re-sign him again because I wasn't happy with them then they go back to playing how they were prior to them playing in SD. So I realize it's not the player is the ballpark it was happening time and time again I start having success when I start getting good contact hitters not so much power hitters and top-notch pitching including the solid bullpen. I won 5 World Series and made the made the playoffs 14 times in 28 seasons since then

NoOne · 01-20-2016, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Padreman

I was signing big time bats and year after year they need performed prior to be signing them (me playing home games at Petco) I was getting frustrated. Then what will really piss me off I will not re-sign him again because I wasn't happy with them then they go back to playing how they we then what will really piss me off I will not re-sign him again because I wasn't happy with them then they go back to playing how they were prior to them playing in SD. So I realize it's not the player is the ballpark it was happening time and time again I start having success when I start getting good contact hitters not so much power hitters and top-notch pitching including the solid bullpen. I won 5 World Series and made the made the playoffs 14 times in 28 seasons since then

it probably wasn't the park to the extent you think it influenced results. a few seasons will have too much volatility, especially since you are comparing half a season to the other half (home/away records). you now need twice as much data for a sufficient sample size. ther is too great a chance that what you experienced was merely bad luck. plus, it sounds like you had much better pitching, which is more strongly correlated with winning, i believe.

take any power hitter that isn't a high contact guy and look over their careers. find multiple examples to peruse. yearly results are likely all over the map. few will be consistent year-to-year, even if they are the exact same ratings on the player.

a miguell cabrara type will be consistent (or fairly consistent), because they don't have glaring weaknesses and unusual talent. if they strike out alot, a bad eye, middle of the road contact or worse, or a combination of those problems, they have that many more factors causing inconsistency.

complete players with power is the goal. don't pay 20mill for a player tha hits 30+hr and strikes out 150+ a year while having a career average around .250-.260. that player is most likely junk relative to cost. (type of league affects what those stats mean, obviously... )

Westheim · 01-20-2016, 05:15 PM

This is straightforward. My team has one of the most home run friendly parks in the league, and there are three more home run friendly parks (thought not quite as much) in my team's 6-team division. So they are playing 108 games already in power parks, before playing against the other division and interleague.

Whenever I'm shipping in a powerless .325 batter that lives on singles and doubles, they shave 20 points off their average for sure, and still don't go deep. Sure as heck I'm loading up on sluggers! Also: groundball pitchers or strikeout pitchers. Bad things happen to guys that give up fly balls on this team.

Why anybody would attempt to approach the issue from the opposite angles and try to beat home runs with even better pitching is completely beyond me. This is fighting wind mills, but worse. Great sluggers will still homer off your pitchers, no matter how good they are, if your park allows for it.

NoOne · 01-23-2016, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westheim

This is straightforward. My team has one of the most home run friendly parks in the league, and there are three more home run friendly parks (thought not quite as much) in my team's 6-team division. So they are playing 108 games already in power parks, before playing against the other division and interleague.

Whenever I'm shipping in a powerless .325 batter that lives on singles and doubles, they shave 20 points off their average for sure, and still don't go deep. Sure as heck I'm loading up on sluggers! Also: groundball pitchers or strikeout pitchers. Bad things happen to guys that give up fly balls on this team.

Why anybody would attempt to approach the issue from the opposite angles and try to beat home runs with even better pitching is completely beyond me. This is fighting wind mills, but worse. Great sluggers will still homer off your pitchers, no matter how good they are, if your park allows for it.

anecdotal experiences aren't enough to be so confident in your conjectures

it may be straightforward to you, but in reality it's qutie a bit more complex.

if a park increases HR, it increases them for all players. how it is divvied up may or may not be proportionate, but it certainly won't reduce a player's chances. so, if they didn't go deep often for you, it was just bad luck. cross that off the list of reasons for/against anything.

i doubt a reasonable park can add or subtract 20points off a batting average. a small sample size on this data is likely causing the deviation. batting averages swing wildly in any given year on their own, just like HR. you would need a ton of data to pinpoint a park's influence on batting averages with confidence. 100's of years would be a good starting point. in fact double that because of home/away splits.

--- below isn't to convince you to change ---

why would anyone attempt to attack from a different angle? yes, how incredulous, indeed!

simple answer: talent distribution, availibility and cost. (the more whacky the contract values of the league, the more costs holds true.)

talent distribution will help you figure out a true ROI for various positions and what they mean to winning. at that point you can better weight the cost of a contract between offesne and pitching. without this information, it's just a good guess at best. (not likely a good one, really - no matter who guesses)

who is available should be obvious... i'll take a good hitter with less power over some low average, high power, if it makes sense. it's a breakeven analysis. depending on the situation, a power hitter will be a worse/better option. you can't say definitively before there is a comparison.

Cost: different for all leagues and changes in those leagues over time - even without human interference like rule or setting changes.

in my league, i need 3 dominant sp and 3-4 dominant RP to roll through the playoffs with a dominant staff (thats with low pitching stamina). the rest is filler for the reg season. RP are cheap compared to all other quality players. SP are about the same as a high-end slugger who can hit well, a bit more than the sluggers with weaknesses in some cases.

when i look at batting i need to be 6 or 7 deep to be a dominant run scoring team. roughly the same amount of all-star quality players, however they are all expensive roles. 1 of those is probably an obp guy, a #2 hitter of some sort and 5 power hitters. at least 3 of those sluggers should be decent hitters, too (3-4-5).

~120ish million for batting or ~90ish million for pitching.... that's a whole lotta extra cheese to spend on other areas of the team.

obviously some are younger and cheaper at various times. the savings might be a bit more on batting when you consider that RP are always cheap, relative to positon players and SP values. however, the gap is large enough that it would be a very special situation where batting is cheaper and a temporary one at that. if that situation arises, you adjust and roll with it.

01-19-2016, 12:46 PM	#1
lightgrenade07 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: SoCal, for now Posts: 231	Ballpark effects as GM - Strategies? How much does your ballpark affect the makeup of the roster you put together? Do you build a roster that can play to its strengths (ie lots of power hitters in an HR friendly park, focus on pitching in a pitcher friendly park) or do you build a team to compensate (eg bring the best pitchers you can to a hitters park)? Does it matter?

01-19-2016, 08:38 PM	#8
Bluenoser Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: In The Moment Posts: 14,185	Ask yourself this - My team plays home games in a pitcher friendly park. I have a chance to sign one of baseball's top power guys at an affordable price. Do I: A. Sign him B. Say nope, can't use ya, it's a pitchers park ? Sign the best players you can afford, damn the torpedoes, win state, go MoJo, all that stuff Last edited by Bluenoser; 01-19-2016 at 08:40 PM.

01-20-2016, 01:27 PM	#12
Padreman Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2013 Location: Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico (formally San Diego, CA.) Posts: 4,138	I was signing big time bats and year after year they need performed prior to be signing them (me playing home games at Petco) I was getting frustrated. Then what will really piss me off I will not re-sign him again because I wasn't happy with them then they go back to playing how they we then what will really piss me off I will not re-sign him again because I wasn't happy with them then they go back to playing how they were prior to them playing in SD. So I realize it's not the player is the ballpark it was happening time and time again I start having success when I start getting good contact hitters not so much power hitters and top-notch pitching including the solid bullpen. I won 5 World Series and made the made the playoffs 14 times in 28 seasons since then __________________ Chargers= Despicable Traitors

01-20-2016, 05:15 PM	#14
Westheim Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 13,718	This is straightforward. My team has one of the most home run friendly parks in the league, and there are three more home run friendly parks (thought not quite as much) in my team's 6-team division. So they are playing 108 games already in power parks, before playing against the other division and interleague. Whenever I'm shipping in a powerless .325 batter that lives on singles and doubles, they shave 20 points off their average for sure, and still don't go deep. Sure as heck I'm loading up on sluggers! Also: groundball pitchers or strikeout pitchers. Bad things happen to guys that give up fly balls on this team. Why anybody would attempt to approach the issue from the opposite angles and try to beat home runs with even better pitching is completely beyond me. This is fighting wind mills, but worse. Great sluggers will still homer off your pitchers, no matter how good they are, if your park allows for it. __________________ Portland Raccoons, 92 years of excell-.... of baseball: Furballs here! 1983 * 1989 * 1991 * 1992 * 1993 * 1995 * 1996 * 2010 * 2017 * 2018 * 2019 * 2026 * 2028 * 2035 * 2037 * 2044 * 2045 * 2046 * 2047 * 2048 * 2051 * 2054 * 2055 * 2061 1 OSANAI : 2 POWELL : 7 NOMURA \| RAMOS : 8 REECE : 10 BROWN : 15 HALL : 27 FERNANDEZ : 28 CASAS : 31 CARMONA : 32 WEST : 39 TONER : 46 SAITO Resident Mets Cynic - The Mets from 1962 onwards, here.

01-19-2016, 02:57 PM	#2
Kent814 All Star Reserve Join Date: Jun 2014 Location: San Diego Posts: 650	I always play to our stregths bcuz u play 81 home gms in the same stadium while the 81 road games ought to have some stadiums similar to yours so that's like 100 games in a certain type of stadium with a team fitted for that stadium

01-19-2016, 03:33 PM	#3
PSUColonel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 13,105	I've always felt you should "defend" your ballpark strengths. So if you have key in a bandbox...pitching should be your priority..if you play in a pitchers park...offense should be your key (OBP & speed)

01-19-2016, 05:11 PM	#4
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	another perspective: a fairly neutral park, which allows you to take advantage of accumulating the best talent available with less worry about them matching your park. also, you limit the max difference between your team's makeup and all road ballparks' factors and the types of teams they might favor. it's always a breakeven analysis of multiple factors when it comes to this question. how much do you gain at home and how much will you lose while away? also, each league could be different with random parks and distribution of park factors within the league. each factor would require it's own research. what's cool about this game is you can set it up and find out for sure. no matter how logical something sounds, it must be verified with objective fact to be true. of course it only proves it for the game. so, no worries. real life baseball will continue to be debateable with current tools/info. you'll need a ton of years to be confident, but you could categorize each team's makeup, then adjust all parks to a specific set of factors, collect the data and analyze the data making use of basic spreadhseet functions. rinse and repeat with different types of ballparks. you could make the teams according to a spec, but i wouldn't change too many teams or the environment will not be consistent with your league and the results will be too tainted. that state of your league needs to be considered, too. e.g. is current talent in an ebb or flow process? instead of individually editting the parks in game, it's probably quicker to edit txt files if they exist, or export one and import to each etc... maybe even just copying and renaming a file over again will save a lot of time and effort.

01-19-2016, 05:56 PM	#6
lightgrenade07 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: SoCal, for now Posts: 231	Thanks, everybody! This is a lot to chew on. Mostly I'm approaching this from a player development angle. Right now, I have a ballpark with standard dimensions and average double-triple-HR ratings (all between .985 and 1.015), but low average (.937 lhb, .946 rhb). I figure it's an average park with a really large foul area. Do I focus on power, patience and ground balls, then?

01-19-2016, 08:31 PM	#7
ThePretender All Star Starter Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 1,323	Better off building to win in any park as opposed to just one. I know you play more games in your park, but I've never agreed that it's smart to build for your park. I'm still building a team that'll hit for power whether I'm in Coors or Petco, because if I have more power than my opponent, I'll hit for more HR and win more games even in a park that suppresses HR. My team's are going to have high defence, high obp/slugging, and high K/lowBB/high movement regardless of where I play, so I've never seen the point behind building to a park. Build to win 162 games, not 81. Acquiring good players is the better strategy, as opposed to acquiring guys who fit in your park.

01-20-2016, 02:40 AM	#9
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 0/2 (4)	if they hit well and have power, no one is passing them up, unless they have better or already have as many power hitters as they can afford. era, budget and availability doesn't always allow it to happen. if someone adheres to their perception so strongly that they pass that up without good reason, there's nothing anyone can do for that person. just let them enjoy not winning as much as they could just because a player fits your park, doesn't mean that the gain will outweigh any talent difference possible. the totals are easy to prove that a slugging team scores more runs over time (more complicated than just slugging, so fill-in what you need to agree with that, lol). what i'd be curious about is consistency. a team averages 5 runs a game - pretty good. 816 runs. 60 of them came from 3 games because their power hitters all went off at the same time. 816-60 = 756; 756/159= 4.7547runs a game instead of 5. does a power hitting team have runs that are more clumped up than other styles of play? i think it adds a higher risk/higher reward element to the equation, but i could be wrong. at some point scoring X runs will trump whatever volatility differences there are. e.g. if your team scores > 1000 runs (maybe), it's not going to matter much if a greater proportion of games have significantly elevated runs scored. even the valleys will be a high average relative to other teams.

01-20-2016, 08:27 AM	#10
mpbaseball22 Minors (Single A) Join Date: Aug 2015 Posts: 74	I think its more important to look at handedness. Example. the Indians park in my game has a HR as L factor of 1.070 and as R its only .750. This means that I should get as many lefty hitters as possible, AND as many lefty pitchers as possible. Lefties are a strength in this park so you want to take be effective against them as pitchers and be able to hit a bunch of HR to the small side of the park with lefty hitters.

01-20-2016, 11:55 AM	#11
jlech1805 Minors (Single A) Join Date: Jul 2013 Posts: 51	I had said this in a thread about 2 weeks back and think it applies here too: I've done this before and had some moderate success, but it never really seems worth it. You can look at real world examples of the Rockies struggling to build consistent contenders or Padres and Marines having to move in their fences to become more neutral. Imagine you have a completely average team. You'd expect to win about 38 games on the road and 43 at home. If you need 90 wins as a minimum to make the playoffs you'd have to go 52-29 at home assuming the road wins stay the same. You'd essentially have to create 9 wins over half a season, or double Mike Trout. If you make a park extreme enough I think you can start to squeeze out advantages. Another way is to exploit a perceived market inefficiency. Power has traditionally been the most expensive asset to buy on the market. If you play in a park where HRs are say .7 or lower you could benefit financially in this aspect. It would mean you'd want a really young team as speed and defense decline immediately while power increases and then plateaus. Still overall I don't think it is worth it.