Ballpark Analysis

Back in July, we announced the latest and greatest version of the Seamheads Ballpark Database (see: http://seamheads.com/blog/2009/07/02/the-seamheads-ballparks-database-is-here/ ).  We also promised we would eventually begin publishing a series of analytical articles that would use the data from the Ballparks Database to investigate various questions, along the lines of what we had previously done in this article regarding home field advantage ( http://seamheads.com/blog/2008/10/24/how-the-home-team-wins/#more-775 ).

In the meantime, Matt Swartz over at Baseball Prospectus did an excellent 5-part study (see http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9474 for an example) dissecting home field advantage, which I highly recommend reading if you have a BP subscription.

So, we’re going to start off in a slightly different direction to begin this new series, and look specifically at fielding.In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at questions such as:

1. What stadiums have been the best/worst overall for turning batted balls into outs?

2. What stadiums have been the best/worst overall for preventing doubles and triples?

We’ll look at single seasons, and we’ll look at all seasons the park existed. Then we’ll look at the same questions, only normalizing for each league/season. As always, we’ll also take suggestions on other ways to analyze the data. Finally, as Retrosheet has been busy releasing even more seasons, and the 2009 season will soon be completed, we’ll be updating the Seamheads Ballpark Database in November, so we’ll have even MORE data to look at!