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As we transition into MLB DFS, I will start with a Trend of the Week in March, which will then become a Trend of the Day which our writers will take turns putting together during the MLB Regular Season.
Trend: Is PETCO Park actually bad?
In an article from last May, I made the argument that PETCO Park may not have deserved its reputation as an extreme pitchers’ park. At the time, I said that PETCO’s numbers were likely skewed by the overall weakness of Padres bats over the past few seasons. I then isolated certain data sets that supported my argument. If you’re interested, that article is available here.
In this week’s MLB Trend, I’m going to examine how PETCO actually stacks up from a DFS perspective. This isn’t going to be entirely production based – remember, in DFS, salary is a big part of the equation. We know DraftKings will price batters up in Coors Field, but will they also lower a batter’s price when he is playing in a perceived pitcher park? If so, is there some inefficiency we can take advantage of?
Step 1: Team Filters > Stadium > Select “PETCO”
The results so far are about as boring as possible: +0.01. Overall, batters have scored almost exactly the amount of points we would have expected them to score, based on salary. That means that the results are average, which by consequence means that the results are not bad.
While we’re here, let’s go on a slight detour. Safeco Field and Tropicana Field have been the worst two places for a batter over the past two seasons.
Step 2: Team Filters > Home / Visitor > Set “Visitor”
While the badness of PETCO is in question, the badness of the Padres themselves is already confirmed. They finished the 2015 season 14 games under .500 and ranked 23rd in total runs scored. And that was actually an improvement on their 2014 numbers, which are also in the database. So let’s take them out of the equation and look at visiting teams only.
The Plus/Minus goes up a few ticks when we look at visiting teams only. While this Plus/Minus may not seem big, it does rank #12 among all ball parks. There is only one stadium where batters have historically added more than one fantasy point per player per game, which obviously is Coors Field.
Step 3: Player Filters > Hand > Set “L”
Ball parks are rarely symmetrical and you will often find that batters of a certain handedness are at an advantage in parks across the league. At PETCO Park, lefties have both scored more raw fantasy points and added more Plus/Minus value. There is a difference of nearly one fantasy point per player per game depending on which hand a player swings the bat with.
Conclusion
Last year, I wrote that PETCO’s negative influence on batter production was overstated, so if I came upon different results this time around, I probably just wouldn’t have written the article to avoid contradicting myself. In all seriousness, PETCO has been an average place for batters to play over the past couple of seasons once you factor DraftKings pricing into the equation. When looking at visiting lefties only, it’s +0.6 Plus/Minus actually ranks as the eighth most favorable matchup overall.
