Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRedChief
Arenado’s stats away from Coors field look like shit to me.
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He's had about an .860 OPS on the road away from Coors. And yeah, that's certainly not as good as his Coors numbers, but those are far from shit. Moreover, unlike Camden, I think Coors hitters have a Coors hangover on the road.
Pitches behave differently in Coors than they do elsewhere. There's less snap, less movement and opponents have worse command because they're not used to how the ball works there. Everything about hitting in Coors is like a video game set to easy level. Then when they get on the road, everything goes back to normal and hitters have to make a pretty significant adjustment to the pitches simply being nastier.
So I think Coors hitters have worse road numbers than they'd have if they simply played at any other ballpark in baseball as their home park. Camden doesn't give that effect. Camden doesn't effect the way pitches behave - only they way they travel off the bat and really only whether or not they're homeruns vs. loud outs.
So if Arenado's home stats are, say, 10% better than they would be were he a Cardinal, his road stats are 5% worse than they'd be, IMO. He still comes out ahead to be sure, but when speaking directly to the splits, there's a penalty on his road numbers.
Machado, OTOH, got a boost in his HR numbers from hitting in Camden but I don't think he gets a penalty when he's on the road because pitches are coming in the same way as they did in Baltimore - they're just not going out as easily. So if he gets a 5% home boost that suddenly evaporates, unlike a Coors hitter I don't think he'll get to make any of that up through more normalized road hitting.