The Future of the Blue Jays

Monday, September 12 2011 @ 02:20 AM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Adam Loewen, of course, is not in this group. As he explained "I am not a rookie." 

I'm not really going to talk about the future of the Blue Jays. Anthopoulos is accumulating as much young talent as he can, which is a sound idea. He's made three large moves, one of which has worked spectacularly so far (Marcum for Lawrie), one of which was addition by subtraction (Wells for Francisco), and one of which has a chance to help in the long run (Rasmus.) But I still can't see them seriously contending in this division before 2014, unless a whole lot of young pitchers take a surprising step forward. And you would have to be insane to count on that happening.

Elsewhere - are battles for post-season berths still going on?

Probably not, but Tampa Bay and the Angels are still hanging tough. With Josh Becket temporarily on the shelf, the Red Sox are down to one competent starter, and every time Jon Lester gets beat the Sox are in danger of losing six or seven in a row. Tampa Bay comes into Fenway Park for four games this week. Should be lively.

Out west, one assumes that the Angels' plan is to try to stay within reach of Texas until the final weekend, when the Rangers and Angels finish their seasons with three games in Anaheim.

But honestly - none of these AL teams impress me very much. I actually think either the Angels or Rays would have a better chance to succeed in the post-season than the four teams that are probably going to be there.

In the Other League, the Cardinals haven't quite given up the ghost - they trail the Braves by 4.5, the Brewers by 6 - but it shouldn't be long now. Arizona and Milwaukee are fighting hard for the right to play Atlanta rather than Philadelphia in the first round.

This may simply be the year to duck, and get out of the way of the Philadelphia Steamroller.

Alex pointed out the other day that Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay has rather suddenly turned into the best pitcher's park in the American League. This is indeed a new development - through 2006, the Trop had actually been the most neutral park in all of Recorded History in terms of its effects on offense. (Through 2006, the Rays had scored and allowed 7063 runs at home, 7072 on the road - and they'd actually played one more game on the road in those nine years.) But only one of the five seasons since then has followed that mold (2009) - offense at the Trop has been suppressed a little bit in one of those years (2008), and by an enormous amount in three of the others (2007, 2010, 2011).

When I last looked at this subject in depth, Petco in San Diego had staked an early claim as the toughest place to score runs in the history of the game. That was based, however, on just three seasons. In the life of a stadium, three seasons is a rather small sample size, and in at least two of the seasons since then the Giants' home field appears to have had an even more oppressive effect than Petco on run scoring. (Magpie reminds himself that after updating the big database after the season, it would be a good idea to gather the data for the 30 current ball parks and have a look.)

Anyway, here's run scoring for each team at home and away so far this season. They're sorted by how much they boost the offense (I just divide runs scored/allowed at home by runs scored/allowed on the road - adjusting for the different number of games played at this point in the season.)

First, the data....

Team            GPL   RS     RA    RUNS        GPL   RS     RA    RUNS        PARK
    home  home  home   home       road  road  road   road       

Texas    74    440    377    817        72    317    254    571        1.39
Toronto    73    352    380    732        73    329    301    630        1.16
Boston    71    392    347    739        74    390    282    672        1.15
New York AL  73    425    305    730        71    374    275    649        1.09
Baltimore    72    315    383    698        72    294    376    670        1.04
Detroit    73    359    326    685        72    331    319    650        1.04
Chicago AL   71    286    308    594        73    301    291    592        1.03
Cleveland    72    294    320    614        71    307    319    626        0.97
Kansas City  73    318    340    658        74    330    370    700        0.95
Oakland    71    305    273    578        74    287    348    635        0.95
Minnesota    72    253    355    608        73    302    359    661        0.93
Seattle    74    243    289    532        71    256    309    565        0.90
Los Angeles AL  74    283    253    536        71    311    305    616        0.83
Tampa Bay     74    271    262    533        70    345    283    628        0.80
                                           
Colorado    73    416    377    793        72    251    305    556        1.41
Arizona    71    345    305    650        75    311    303    614        1.12
Cincinnati    71    348    316    664        74    324    324    648        1.07
Houston     71    279    354    633        74    274    356    630        1.05
Milwaukee    72    342    269    611        75    300    316    616        1.03
Philadelphia   71    339    216    555        71    312    245    557        1.00
Pittsburgh     74    262    330    592        71    287    290    577        0.98
Florida     72    281    317    598        72    293    320    613        0.98
Chicago NL     75    303    342    645        70    283    349    632        0.95
Washington     73    287    284    571        70    264    317    581        0.94
New York NL    70    293    315    608        75    352    344    696        0.94
Atlanta     72    296    242    538        74    296    295    591        0.94
Los Angeles NL  71    246    276    522        73    318    274    592        0.91
St. Louis    74    315    307    622        71    358    318    676        0.88
San Diego     72    231    265    496        74    311    301    612        0.83
San Francisco   74    201    237    438        71    283    273    556        0.76
With the exception of the Trop, I don't think there any real surprises here. A few comments nonetheless...

Rangers Ballpark in Arlington is turning into Coors Field south. This needs to be more widely understood.  It was merely the best hitter's park in the AL when I looked at this five years ago. The Rangers have scored 440 runs in their home park, more than any other team in baseball. But in road games, six teams in their own league - including Tampa Bay - have scored more runs. The superiority of the Rangers' offense over that of the Rays is largely a Park Effect. (Of course, so is the superiority of Tampa's pitching.)

Fenway and the Rogers Centre are both pretty good places to hit, but neither park has helped the home team's hitters very much (men in white or not.) It's their opponents who have had a jolly time when they come to town. Especially Toronto's. With a couple of exceptions (Romero, Janssen), the Blue Jays pitchers (Morrow, Drabek, Perez in particular) have been simply pummelled at home. Only the Orioles have given up more runs in their own ball park (ah - but this doesn't include yesterday's game! The Jays staff now holds this dubious distinction!)

Comiskey II in Chicago and Comerica in Detroit are now showing up as better parks for hitters than pitchers. This is a new development. To some degree, this is actually a matter of the league changing around them - the Trop has gone from a neutral park to a pitcher's paradise, and the Metrodome has been replaced by Target Field. Of course, old Yankee Stadium has given way to the new, and the new place has favoured the hitters in two of the three years they've played there.

In the other league... well, humidor or no humidor, Coors Field is still Coors Field.  The biggest surprise for me in the NL? That would be the Mets. Get their hitters away from Citi Field, and they have the second best offense in the National League (behind St. Louis). Who knew?

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