Guess who has best road offense in MLB
In Wednesday night’s AL wild-card game between the A’s and Yankees at the Stadium, bettors must remember the visitors possessed the best road offense in all of baseball during the 2018 season.
This has largely been hidden from mainstream media coverage because not enough attention is paid to ballpark effects. The Oakland Coliseum was the third best pitchers’ park in the majors in 2018. That hampered the A’s ability to post big numbers in their home games.
To get you ready for the full playoff handicapping challenge, we’ve compiled “Park Factor” rankings through 81 home games for all postseason contenders (ignoring the NL tiebreakers to keep sample sizes even). We’ve ranked them from best to worst in terms of offense:
A reminder that this stat doesn’t focus on raw volume per site. It compares the number of runs scored in home games to those scored in road games. Yankee Stadium doesn’t rate No. 6 in MLB because the Yankees have a great offense that drives up scoring. The offense plays in road games too! There were 12 percent more runs scored in Yankees home games than in Yankees road games. For Oakland, 16 percent fewer runs scored in home games than road games.
You can see only the Dodgers and A’s played home games in pitchers’ parks. When you look at “road only” scoring, they grade out as the best two offenses in the 10-team postseason:
Wednesday night, managers for both the A’s and Yanks will be considering creative pitching approaches with the season on the line. The Yankees have the tougher behemoth to tame, particularly now that the elite A’s lineup will be hitting in a park that typically increases offense (pending Wednesday’s weather influences). A’s arms will have their hands full, too.
Sharps pay a lot of attention to park factors and sabermetric measures that provide a “neutralized” read on offenses. We hope you’ll consider today’s data as you make your baseball picks this month. Best of luck!
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