Adjusting Averages for Petco

Thursday August 27, 2009

It gets really old hearing people talk about how poor the Padres hitters are, when in reality they are pretty good, they just play in the toughest park in baseball to get a hit in.

How tough is it to hit at Petco?

Well, batting averages are 20% lower in Petco for home and visiting players combined than in a league average ball park.

So when you see a Padres players batting average just multiply by 1.10 and then you can get a fairly accurate number with which to compare him to other players around the league.

Kevin Kouzmanoff is hitting .256. Multiplied by 1.10 = .282. His .289 batting average on the road shows that number is just about right on the money.

For home runs Petco is even more stingy. On average, left handed batters hit 40% less home run in Petco. So just multiply a Padres players total by 1.20 and you will get about how many home runs they would hit if they played in a league average park.

For Adrian that number is substantial. 34 x 1.20 is 40.8. WOW! And his 23 home runs on the road this season shows that number to be correct.

RH batters "only" hit 27.5% less home runs, so multiply their numbers by 1.1375.

So when you start looking at the stats or reading articles about how well or poorly Padres hitters are doing, do the Park Factor translation.

That will give you a truer measure of their production.