5/17/2010

Blowin' in the Wind

Today's Park Factors Change with the Weather

Pitchers, like kites, perform best when the wind is blowing right at them, but if the wind blows straight away, they can quickly go for a very fast and frightening ride. The wind conditions in some of today's cozy new ballparks can wreak havoc on the performance of hitters and pitchers alike. Thanks to a new tool here at Scouting Book, you can keep tabs on the wind and all of the other factors that vary from park to park around baseball.   

Will there be joy in mudville today? ParkFactors.com will keep you informed... and dry.

Our newest public info-tool, tucked into its own little corner at www.parkfactors.com, will give you a quick, one-stop look at the overall Park Factors for each of MLB's ballparks, along with an extra and very up-to-date twist: weather and wind conditions for each ballpark that's hosting an MLB game today.

You'll now never need to wonder if there's a helpful wind blowing out to left field at Wrigley today, or whether there's a storm coming in over Citizen's Bank Park that will hold down that park's usual home run rate... and maybe even lead to a rainout.

Park Factor, if you're not familiar with the term, is a modern innovation that attempts to place a numeric weight on how 'pitcher friendly' or 'batter friendly' a baseball park might be. Because the 30 parks have 30 different dimensions, outfield distances, foul areas and elevations, a wide variety of effects are influencing every batted ball, far beyond the skills (or control) of the players involved. Park Factor is an attempt to nail down exactly how much of an effect, to measure how a park 'plays' when compared to other ballparks.

The measurement known as 'Park Factor' is a young statistic, and as such there are different schools of thought on precisely how it should be calculated, in much the same way there are two different definitions of a 'hold', or more than one way to measure fielding range. At ParkFactors.com, we're erring on the conservative side for now, displaying the two most widely-used calculations, one based on total runs scored in the park vs runs scored in other parks, and the other using home runs as the key counting stat.

Why both? Well, while runs might be the measure of total offense most people are interested in, we think there's some extra value in knowing just how homer-happy a stadium is. We present both of these numbers for each park, and also display the average of these two ratings as the baseline Park Factor for your at-a-glance consumption. (We're aware of more advanced formulas, and how various refinements could make these measures more accurate, yes. We may add some nerdier information in the future, but right now we're keeping it simple, and we hope you agree that it's at least a little bit useful this way.)

Superimposed on top of our Park Factor display is an automatically-updating infographic showing the wind speed and direction in each park right now, according to the National Weather Service, adjusted for each park's geography and aerodynamics, along with a note reminding you who, if anyone, is playing today.

We've also linked ParkFactors.com up to our popular ProbablePitchers.com, since we know that a lot of you readers use that site as a guide when choosing your daily fantasy lineups.

So whether you're an avid fantasy player looking for an extra edge every morning, or just a fan wondering if it's a good day to walk over to the old ballpark without an umbrella, we think ParkFactors.com will give you more of what you need in one quick, handy reference.

As always, let us know what you think. Providing fun, easy and useful tools for baseball fans is what we're all about, after all.

   

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