Dodgers Helping to Prove Something is Wrong with Coors Field
The Dodgers came into this weekend’s series with 3 of his best pitchers ready for Dave Roberts to put on the mound at Coors Field.
Game 1 – Walker Buehler with his 0.87 ERA, 42 strikeouts and one walk this month. Struck out 16 Rockies just last week.
- Result: Lit up for 13 hits and 7 runs
Game 2 – Hyun-Jin Ryu and his 1.27 ERA as the league’s most dominant pitcher.
- Result: Couldn’t get out of the 4th inning
Game 3 – Clayton Kershaw and his 3.01 ERA and 7-1 Record.
- Result: Blackmon hit a homer off a weak curve ball on the outside corner.
Much of the reputation Coors Field has gained over the years has been built upon the fact that it wasn’t a pitchers park. With the thin air, the ball would have a harder time breaking, so advantage to the batters. In order to balance out that advantage, the Rockies installed a humidor in 2002 to store game balls, so that the balls wouldn’t have too much bounce off the bats and it helped decrease the amount of scoring at the park until MLB standardized the storage of baseballs in 2018.
Major League Baseball will install climate sensors in each room to measure temperature and humidity throughout the 2018 season. That data will be used to determine whether a humidor is necessary in individual storage rooms for the 2019 season.
The Arizona Diamondbacks are installing a humidor this season. Their room is designed to store baseballs at the MLB recommendations of 70 degrees and 50% humidity. The Colorado Rockies have used a humidor since 2002 for the same reason Arizona is installing one: to combat the effects of storing baseballs in dry conditions. Lack of moisture makes baseballs slicker and gives them a higher coefficient of restitution, or liveliness. – SI
The standardization of storage probably was due to some irregularities from other ball parks that could have used more offense. Think about it, if you can increase humidity to decrease the home runs, why couldn’t you decrease humidity to increase home runs?
Moving along, the effects of this standardization has affected the Rockies in a way that most would have never predicted. (Don’t forget about the juiced balls.) Looks at this year’s ridiculous numbers from ESPN:
- Coors Field has the highest park factor for scoring since 2001 (the year before their humidor was installed)
- Charlie Blackmon is hitting over .500 at home in his last 10 games.
- .468/.518/.984 at home vs. .236/.272/.382 on the road
- Exit Velocity is 5mph faster at home
- Strikes out 50% on the road
- Breaking Balls – Slugging 1.121 at home vs. .471 on the road.
- Fast Balls – Slugging 1.123 at home vs. .296 on the road
- Teams have scored 10 runs or more 20 times in games involving the Rockies. 17 of those games were at Coors Field.
- Rockies Closer, Wade Davis has a 10.66 ERA at Home and 0.79 ERA on the Road.
- Batters are hitting .258 on grounders this year at Coors vs. .211 everywhere else
Bottom line is that in order to win the type of baseball being played at Coors Field, the Dodgers need to just play outstanding defense and just pray that everyone else in the league, including the Rockies, suffer from these offensive anomalies.
Yeah, I am not enamored with the Dodgers defense the last couple of games. And, I just wish that Hernandez and Barnes could ditch the 210 batting averages. At least Taylor has snapped out of his hitting slump.
Will be happy when Seager comes back as they miss him.
Scott, I agree here as far as Barnes and Hernandez go. And was it not strange to see Taylor, who is the team’s hottest hitter at the moment sit in yesterday’s game. If that isn’t lunacy then IDK what is.
Chris Taylor needs to learn how to throw a baseball accurately. He is AWFUL.The Dodgers should stop shuffling players around from one position to another. It is BAD for fielding performance.
It’s the fact that mlb decided it was a good idea to juice the ball this year. Runs allowed at Coors had been trending down for years and last year there were 3 other parks with more runs allowed than Coors. So attendance down in baseball for several years now mlb has decided that changing the ball was a good idea to get fans back in the game but now league wide games are lasting way longer and turning more fans off. Way to go MLB
Didn’t see this type of article when the Dodgers we’re winning at Coors field. Boo who you lost a couple of games. Get over it.
Nothing is WRONG with Coors Field, it is just a matter of environmental influences. When are people going to say there is something with the sandbox of a park in Philadelphia and punish players for their stats there? How about a stadium with a 305-foot depth down the line? I can’t find a high school field anywhere with those dimensions but you praise Aaron Judge for hitting homeruns there in Yankee Stadium with those dimensions.
The air at altitude does not cause the baseball to break or move as dramatically as it does at lower elevations. If you are a curve ball pitcherb beware of altitude. Ask Danny Neagle how that worked for him here. A class is move by a classically stupid front office, but that is a different discussion. Boo hoo, the mighty Dodgers got their noses bloodied. Good.
Coors field is a joke!…………if you refuse to acknowledge that something is different with that ballpark and the way the ball flies around within it, resulting in grossly skewed batting averages, extra extra (not a typo) base hits and grossly inflated pitching ERA’s you are watching the games with blinders on and ear plugs in………but then maybe you are probably a Rocky fan and Rocky fans and their media have been in denial since the place was built..
The grass is messed up on top of the thin air and juiced balls. How on earth can you obvious Rockies fans not see something is very wrong at their stadium. I have heard it suggested before, and agree that they should be forced to enclose the park in a dome with specific climate control to stop this out of control ridiculousness.
Oh, and Blackman be damned, I have respect for the heart he plays with, but him as well as Arenado, need a serious dose of reality.
Arenado and Blackmon are great players…………are their numbers inflated because of that ballpark? Yea, sure they are……….but they are still great players.
Dodgers fans when they win: “best team of the decade!”
Dodgers fans when they lose: “something must have been wrong with the stadium or the baseballs”
One of the most frustrating results of this stadium is how inflated our pitchers’ ERAs become after pitching at this ballpark. Ryu had a 1.27 ERA going into that game and walked off the mound with a 1.83 and his 2nd loss out of his 16 starts. That’s more than half a run increase! And let’s talk about Blackmon and his incredible feat against Kershaw’s curveball. Granted, it was left hanging, but still the only occurrence of a left handed hitter homering off of Kershaw’s curve in his entire professional career!
On a related note, the general insanely high BAs from the Rockies’ roster is also a point to be made. When half your games are played at Coors, of course your average is going to look like all star quality. Even though it doesn’t really affect us as a team, when it comes time for batting titles, it does affect, not only our individual players, but every player in the entire league.
Gosh , if only both teams got to bat there.
Noses bloodied? It was a series split. Dodgers still up 12. Just 4 days off the calendar for Rox. Golden opportunity to pick up 2 or 4 games by the boards, though.
Interesting article, but aren’t both teams playing in the same conditions, using the same baseballs? I don’t see how this provides one team with an advantage.
I don’t think the article is suppose to argue who has the advantage. Just that there’s a problem with Coors Field in general as an outlier from the average ball park.