One thing that has been discussed quite regularly here at Over the Monster is the impact that playing at
It is pretty common to hear comments about how tough it is for a pitcher to succeed in the AL East or how the division might benefit a hitter like Stephen Drew, who is looking to rebuild his value on a one-year deal. At the same time, we tend to think of road numbers as being neutral where environment is concerned. With numbers for RH/LH splits care of Fangraphs, I took a detailed look at this issue recently and discovered that while the unbalanced does produce some slight differences in road environments, those differences are small and they are schedule specific, since a few games in interleague play and outside of the division are not consistent year to year, but they are there, and the Red Sox actually have some of the more noticeable effects going on.
As we intuit, the Red Sox, playing in the AL East typically gives the Red Sox a fairly friendly road environment. By my calculations,
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Singles |
Doubles |
Home Runs |
LH |
100 |
100 |
103 |
RH |
100 |
99 |
102 |
That is based on a neutral environment for interleague games and an even distribution of games against the other non-divisional American League teams and not the specific 2013. It is basically what we expect. Playing extra games in
Inter-league play has the Red Sox traveling to a few extreme environments in 2013. They will play in the offensive wonderland that is Coors Field and in Philly’s lefty-friendly
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|
Singles
|
Doubles
|
Home Runs
|
LH
|
101
|
101
|
101
|
RH
|
101
|
102
|
100
|
Combined with the extremes of
Red Sox Combined Home and
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|
Singles
|
Doubles
|
Home Runs
|
LH
|
100
|
109
|
98
|
RH
|
101
|
105
|
100
|
The effects of park factors on the road pale in comparison the impact that Fenway has on the game, but like Fenway, they tend favor offense for the Red Sox. As it turns out, there is some truth to the notion that the AL East is a more difficult place to pitch than other divisions because of the parks on the road as well, but it is easy to exaggerate those effects. The differences in park factor effects in road games is understandably small, but Boston has some of the more significant variations in road games park factors and the pro-offense inter-league schedule adds to that this year, if just a small amount. At other times, the road factors could be even closer to neutral. These numbers also exclude any compensation for the change in fences at Safeco, which could lead to even more offense if they achieve their goal out in