Often when a player leaves one stadium for another we make adjustments based on home park factors to see if he will gain or lose in his power numbers. This was obvious when it came to Matt Holliday moving to Oakland and so far his power has gone away as we expected. The question I want to raise is are we looking at the factors of home park to much. I would like to suggest more be made of Division factors. With the unbalanced schedule close to 70% of their games are played in just 4-5 ball parks.
My first case would be Raul Ibanez. He could be on a fluky hot start, but 5 of his 7 homers have come in Philly and the others in Colorado and DC. We all know that Seattle is not a home run park, but he also played a large number of games in LA Anaheim and Oakland. These 4 parks all deflate home run numbers and would drag his totals down. Now in Philly he gains at home, but also Washington was ahead of most AL West stadiums last year in homers. Even Atlanta played better than most AL West stadiums.
Another would be pitchers leaving the NL West. A good example would be a potential Jake Peavy trade. We all know he pitches in the best pitchers park in baseball, but also Dodgers Stadium and AT&T Park are known to deflate homers.
Many projections gave Ibanez a small uptick to 25 homers, but I think we are seeing that it could be more than that. He did total 33 three seasons ago while still in Seattle, so it is not that far in his past. I'm not sure what projections take into account league factors, but I think it is important to remember when dealing with players moving in our out of the AL or NL West.
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