What John Smoltz Won't Tell You About Citizens Bank Park: It's Neutral!

by David S. Cohen on Oct 3, 2008 10:31 AM EDT

John Smoltz is living in the past.

The new color commentator for the Phillies/Brewers series likes to repeat how Citizens Bank Park is a hitters park where anything can happen and no lead is safe. In two games so far, he's said it innumerable times already. His comments are just expansions of what he's said before as a player: that CBP is a joke.

But what John Smoltz doesn't want to acknowledge or is too lazy to look up is that CBP is a different stadium this year. As I began to write about a few weeks ago, CBP played as a neutral park in 2008. The stats on September 3 put CBP as the most neutral park in baseball. The year end stats show that it's no longer the most neutral, but it's pretty close. The only stadiums more neutral are in Anaheim and Cleveland.

And you don't need fancy park factor stats to prove this. Just look at the numbers for home and away games for the Phillies in some pretty simple stats:

Runs: Phillies scored 412 runs at home, 387 away. Their opponents scored 338 at CBP, 342 in their home parks. Totaling these numbers, in Phillies games, 750 runs were scored at CBP while 729 were scored in other parks. That translates to 9.26 runs per game at CBP and 9.00 runs per game in other parks.

Home runs: Phillies hit 109 home runs at home, 105 away. Their opponents hit 80 home runs at CBP, 80 in their own parks. That's a total difference of 4 home runs in home and away games for the Phillies this year. Just 4.

OPS: The Phillies home OPS was .788 and their away OPS was .753. Their opponents CBP OPS was .722 and their home OPS was .757. So both the Phillies and their opponents had a .035 OPS difference at their home parks with the average team OPS in Phillies games almost identical at .755.

ERA: The Phillies home ERA was 3.65 this year. Their away ERA was 4.13.

None of these numbers is consistent with a homer-friendly park where no lead is safe and anything can happen. They're all quite telling that CBP is a neutral park this year.

Don't let John Smoltz tell you otherwise.

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Single-year park factors

Pretty unreliable, yes?

The larger point is that CBP has never been the hitter’s paradise that is its reputation. Yes, it has historically elevated homers a bit and run scoring slightly, but not nearly to the degree that the MSM thinks.

by phatj on Oct 3, 2008 11:45 AM EDT 0 recs

True

Single year park factors are not reliable, but they do tell us what’s happening this year. This year, CBP just isn’t playing like a crazy hitters park. It has in years past, but not this year.

by David S. Cohen on Oct 3, 2008 11:51 AM EDT up 0 recs

2007

Didn’t it play fairly close to neutral last year as well?

On the larger point, it’s not an oversight, accident or coincidence that I haven’t referred to the Phils’ home park as OFJOAB for a few months now.

by dajafi on Oct 3, 2008 12:07 PM EDT up 0 recs

A multiyear park factor may tell you more about how a single park plays in general, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you how a park player in a particular year.

For example, 5 years from now, CBP may have a slightly postive park factor average. One of those years the park could have still played average, because that year had a lot of dry nights with the wind blowing in.

Essentially, a one year park factor can be seen as descriptive, while a multiyear park factor is probably more predictive.

by christonabike on Oct 3, 2008 3:18 PM EDT up 0 recs

What I meant to say

Thanks – that was a much clearer way of saying what I meant to say in my comment above.

by David S. Cohen on Oct 3, 2008 3:41 PM EDT up 0 recs

Seeing as how the dimensions of the park haven’t changed lately, if weather’s really the main variable here it seems to me that the most accurate calculation of park factor would be park factor for all Septembers combined, or all Aprils + Septembers combined, or park factor when the temperature is below X degrees. I guess it’s possible that it isn’t temperature though – maybe the prevailing winds have shifted or something.

by taco pal on Oct 3, 2008 4:55 PM EDT up 0 recs

I get that

But the reason that I brought up the point that one-year park factors are unreliable is that just because CBP has played pretty neutral this year doesn’t mean that it can be expected to play neutral going forward. Note for instance the change that David mentioned in his OP: it went from most neutral to third-most neutral in about a month. Not a huge difference, to be sure, but enough to show the micro-level volatility of park factors, especially considering CBP never played that extreme to begin with.

So if it has been a homer haven in the past, it’s still one now, even if the numbers from this year don’t show it. If you have a multi-year trend of declining home runs and/or run scoring, then maybe you can say that it’s a neutral park.

by phatj on Oct 3, 2008 9:00 PM EDT up 0 recs

I’ve always thought CBP got its reputation from a phillies team that hits lots of homers, and a phillies staff that gives up lots of homers. The dimensions arn’t that short, esp to center.

by Clyde Simmons on Oct 13, 2008 2:47 PM EDT 0 recs