Smarter Than the Average Bear
June 17, 2005
Ray Murphy wrote an excellent article over at
Baseball HQ about the success of
the
Nationals
.
If you don't have a subscription, I highly recommend getting one
because Ron Shandler and crew do a marvelous job analyzing the
day-to-day in both leagues, plus they offer think pieces like Murphy's
"Exploiting Park Effects at RFK" every week. I won't go
into the details of the article, but suffice it to say that the
Nationals are pitching much better at home than they are on the
road. Surprisingly, however, the hitters are doing roughly the
same wherever they play. Murphy's article was more focused on the
fantasy ramifications than the philosophy of roster construction, so it
really didn't venture into speculation about how this came about.
There are a number of people in the baseball analysis business who
don't have a high opinion of GM Jim Bowden's acumen. But while it
might seem far fetched to
some, the way the Nats' roster was constructed was probably by
design.
Before anyone played a single game at RFK this year, the decision had
been made to configure it to the way it was when the Senators played
there. That is, it was going to have deep power alleys and play
favorably to pitchers. The reason, I assume, is because the
Nationals/Expos had a number of young pitchers who demonstrated a
flyball tendency and a big park, or at least one that played large,
would help their confidence. Pitchers like John Patterson, Tony
Armas and Chad Cordero seemingly only lacked the ability to keep the
ball in the park to take a major step forward.
The main problem with this is that if you help the pitchers, logic
tells you that the hitters are going to suffer. One only has to
look at what happen to the Padre sluggers last year when the team moved
to Petco Park. Forty-homer threats Phil Nevin and Brian Giles
barely made it into the 20s with the their home run totals. And
since the Nats were going to be on a pretty tight budget, they really
couldn't afford to go out and grab a couple big name sluggers in an
effort to offset the park effects. What to do?
Well, park effects can be deceiving. At RFK, for example, not all
fly balls are created equal. High fly balls (ones that travel
above the pressbox level) tend to die in the swirling winds above the
stadium. When the D-backs visited RFK to open the season, Troy
Glaus launched three mammoth shots that soared above the stadium and
had everyone in the pressbox guessing whether or not they would travel
at least 450 feet. However, each died short of the warning
track. In fact, just about every high fly ball, no matter how
impressive or threatening, seems to end up finding leather. The
balls that get out are the ones that are usually hard hit low fly balls
and line-drives that rise no more than 30 or 40 feet above the
ground. Frank Howard used to hit home runs with regularity at RFK
when he was with the Senators. However, Frank Howard was an
enormous human being who was so strong he hit balls out of
stadiums. If I recall correctly, he's the only player to hit
balls out of both Dodger Stadium and Memorial Stadium in
Baltimore. I could be wrong on that, but the point is that a
little wind could not stop a Howard bomb. And just a little side
note - the next time you visit RFK, either come well before the start
or linger until after the crowd has cleared. There are three
seats in the upper deck that are painted white. They are a little
hard to see because the upper deck seating is painted yellow, but one
is above left field, another is above the left field power alley and
the third is above dead center. Those seats mark where Howard hit
home runs. And hearing Washington Post columnist Thom Boswell
tell it, each was hit on a line.
Anyway, back to the Nats... look at their current line-up and you'll
see it's comprised of guys who tend to hit line drives and low
flyballs. Brad Wilkerson, Jose Vidro, Ryan Church, Nick Johnson,
Brian Schneider all hover around 20% of their balls in play being line
drives. Coincidence? Maybe. But Bowden also
acquired Jose Guillen, Junior Spivey and Marlon Byrd this year and each
has averaged around the same 20% mark over the past two years.
Byrd dropped well below 20% last year but he proved he is most
successful
when he hits plenty of line drives (25%) as he did in 2003.
Guillen's success follows a similar pattern. Besides the fact
that Spivey has amazing
range, can also play shortstop and the Brewers were looking to move him
anyway with Rickie Weeks ready, isn't it interesting that he also hits
line drives more than 20% of his balls in play? Of the new
faces, only Vinny Castilla doesn't hit a high percentage of line
drives, but he was acquired as much for his defense, price and the ever
elusive "veteran leadership" as his offense. The big trade rumor
making the rounds is Rockie centerfielder Preston Wilson coming to the
Nationals in
exchange for a pitcher. Wilson's line drive rate? 22% each
of the last two years.
So assuming Bowden did recognize this about an offense at RFK, how
would he know? How would he know to look for line drive hitters
in a park where no one has played in more than 30 years? Perhaps
it's because he was the GM for a team that played in a stadium that was
configured very similarly to RFK, Riverfront Stadium. Maybe I'm
giving him too much credit. Maybe he's just really, really
lucky. Or maybe he saw how successful hitters like Sean Casey,
Dmitri Young and Barry Larkin were at Riverfront and figured it would
work at RFK as well. Did team president Tony Tavares and team VP
Kevin Uhlich know they needed a GM who understood what the park effects
were going to be and figured Bowden's experience in Cincy made him a
prime candidate? Maybe, maybe not. But maybe it's time to a
least consider the possibility that the Nationals' front office might
just know something about what they are doing.