Then Again, Why Would You Ever Want to Leave Dodger Stadium?

September 9, 2008 at 8:57 am | Posted in Chan Ho Park, Clayton Kershaw, Derek Lowe, Hiroki Kuroda, Jonathan Broxton | 15 Comments

When I wrote yesterday that it was hard to understand how the Dodgers could put together an 8-game losing streak and an 8-game winning streak back to back for seemingly no good reason, I neglected to notice that there may in fact be a good reason:

The Dodgers can’t win away from home.

It makes sense if you think about it, right? The entirety of the losing streak came on the road; the majority of the winning streak came at home. As soon as they hit the road last night, all of a sudden Cha Seung Baek (career ERA entering the game: 5.10) shuts them out over 7 innings, allowing only 3 runs. It’s pretty simple to see just by heading over to the MLB.com standings:

Fewest road wins, MLB 2008:
30. San Diego, 23
29. Atlanta, 24
28. Washington, 25
27. Seattle, 26
27. Pittsburgh, 26
25. Cincinnati, 27
24. Dodgers, 28
24. Kansas City, 28

The Royals, by the way, are 61-81, and no other team on that list is even within sniffing range of .500, much less the playoffs. Teams that have a better road record than LA include San Francisco, Baltimore, and Oakland, each of whom already have 78 losses or more.

The flip side to this is of course that the Dodgers have an excellent home record of 45-30, which is good for second in the NL behind Chicago and 6th in all of baseball. Unfortunately, if things stand as they are, the first round opponent of the Blue in the playoffs would be… Chicago, who would have home-field advantage as they’re going to finish with the best record in the National League.

So why is this? Oddly enough, the batting stats don’t really show much of a difference:

Dodgers offense @ home, 2008: .263/.328/.392 .720 OPS
Dodgers offense on road, 2008: .259/.327/.396 .723 OPS

Actually, forget “don’t really show much of a difference.” Those splits are creepily identical. However, the pitching splits… well… you might want to have the kids leave the room for this one, folks.

Dodgers pitching @ home, 2008: 2.93 ERA, .222/.283/.327 .610 OPS against
Dodgers pitching on road, 2008: 4.66 ERA, .282/.351/.433 .784 OPS against

Now, your first reaction is “it must be the pitching, because the hitters are pretty consistent no matter where they are, but the hurlers get killed on the road.” There’s definitely something to that, because a team with a pitching staff as good as the Blue have shouldn’t be giving up nearly 5 runs a game when they’re away from home, and we’ll get to that in a second. But the offense can’t get a pass on this entirely. Remember, Dodger Stadium is known as a park that is very friendly to pitchers (and this year, is ranked as the 2nd most friendly by one such rating, though I’m not entirely thrilled with ESPN’s methodology). What that means, though, is that the offense really is doing worse on the road than at home, because if you’re playing in a home park that depresses offense… having nearly identical stats on the road means that you are in fact performing worse on the road. If you were really performing exactly the same, the road stats would be higher due to not being depressed by Dodger Stadium.

Back to the pitching, though. That split between home/road goes way beyond park factors; it’s just too big. In fact, the .610 OPS against is the best home OPS of any pitching staff in the bigs. Again, the home park helps a bit, but not so much as to explain the fact that the .784 road OPS is the 20th best in the bigs. Why do the same pitchers perform so much worse away from home? Let’s check out some of the worst offenders:

Derek Lowe
Home: 2.45 ERA, .206 BA against
Away: 5.06 ERA, .311 BA against

Clayton Kershaw
Home: 3.27 ERA, .245 BA against
Away: 6.69 ERA, .312 BA against

Jonathan Broxton
Home: 2.73 ERA, .169 BA against
Away: 4.26 ERA, .273 BA against

Hiroki Kuroda
Home: 3.54 ERA, .231 BA against
Away: 4.42 ERA, .273 BA against

Chan Ho Park
Home: 1.65 ERA, .226 BA against
Away: 4.40 ERA, .288 BA against

Pretty striking, isn’t it? One notable missing name is Chad Billingsley… who’s awesome no matter where he pitches. Either way, though, if the Dodgers get into October, they’re certainly not going to be playing all their games in Los Angeles – so they better figure out what’s going on, and fix it. Pronto.

- Mike Scioscia’s tragic illness

15 Comments »

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Nice.

How about you talk up some Russell Martin while your at it. Is it a Joe Torre issue or is Russell in a slump?

Comment by dustin— September 9, 2008 #

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Dustin, I think we’ve hit on that issue pretty consistently over the last 2 months or so.

Comment by Mike Scioscia's tragic illness— September 9, 2008 #

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By those numbers the Dodgers should setup the rotation if they make the playoffs for Bills to start game one and 5, Kuroda game 2, Lowe game 3, and Maddux game 4.

Comment by Throwdeuce— September 9, 2008 #

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That ESPN Park Factor is not really good at all.
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http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/LAD/attend.shtml
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Dodger Stadium has been a slight hitters park ever since McCourt removed like a mile of foul territory to put in new seats.
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Which makes it even more odd that the Dodgers’ staff is so good at home.

Comment by Fire Ned Colletti Now— September 9, 2008 #

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Kensai, you’re from Hawaii? I don’t know why I never noticed that before.

I agree the ESPN park factor stinks. I don’t really like the BR one that much either, though. I’ve yet to find a really good one.

Comment by Mike Scioscia's tragic illness— September 9, 2008 #

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Yeah, i’m from Hawaii, how did you find out? Just in your site’s stats or did I drop some kind of hint? :o
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Baseball Reference is the only half decent one I can find. Though it’s sorta hard to believe that The Ballpark In Arlington rates as a pitcher’s park.

Comment by kensai— September 10, 2008 #

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I get all the comments emailed to me, and yours showed up as xxxxx.hawaii.rr.com. Aren’t the interwebs great? I’m about 5000 miles from you, and here we are talking about a team from a place where neither of us live.

Comment by Mike Scioscia's tragic illness— September 10, 2008 #

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Wait, you don’t live in Los Angeles, either? Hahahaha. Oh man.
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I do usually make it to Dodger Stadium at least once a year though. So it’s my fault when Derek Lowe gives up 11 earned in 1 1/3 or whatever. :o

Comment by Fire Ned Colletti Now— September 10, 2008 #

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Hey, MSTI, I want to know your opinion on something. There’s been some rumblings lately that Frank McCourt is having financial issues, and is unhappy with the attendance at Dodger Stadium. There’s some interesting speculation on http://www.truebluela.com

Comment by True Blue Fan— September 10, 2008 #

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I think that was blatantly obvious from the time he choose to give up Carlos Santana for 2 million dollars.

Comment by Fire Ned Colletti Now— September 11, 2008 #

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But why now though? Why advocate the Colletti “Buy expensive veteran talent now rather than trade youngsters” policy when that would obviously drive the payroll over $100 million when there were concerns about finances when he bought the team in ’04?

Comment by True Blue Fan— September 11, 2008 #

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Plus, Carlos Santana was a guy I’d never even heard of before the trade deadline got close and Jonathan Meloan was having a horrible year, so from the Indians perspective, how is that even CLOSE to a fair trade to give up a solid player like Casey Blake for a guy with a 5-10 record and a 4.97 ERA? Now I agree that giving up Carlos Santana was a bit excessive given his performance this year, but you know, we already have a catcher with stardom written all over him in Russell Martin. As a former minor leaguer myself, I hate it when organizations block talent because they already have an everyday player at the next level, so why not trade him now and let the kid play? IF he turns into the best catcher in the majors and Russell turns into Jason Phillips re-incarnate, THEN you can throw my comments back in my face.

Comment by True Blue Fan— September 11, 2008 #

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From the Indians perspective, it was a steal. Just because not everyone’s heard of Carlos Santana doesn’t mean he’s not an excellent young prospect.

Comment by Mike Scioscia's tragic illness— September 11, 2008 #

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Excellent point, MSTI, but I’d like to see how he fares against pitching at the AA and AAA levels before we all start freaking out and calling him an uber-prospect.

Comment by True Blue Fan— September 11, 2008 #

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[...] a fair point, because as we’ve already said both he and Kershaw are into new terrority – and I suggested earlier this month that Billingsley get to skip a start or two, which hasn’t happened. But it’s somewhat [...]

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Mike Scioscia's tragic illness