Which Blue Jays hitters like the home cooking?

Monday, March 31 2003 @ 02:20 AM EST

Contributed by: robertdudek

A long time ago, I asked myself if the Skydome favours a certain type of hitter. It didn't take me a long time to gather all the necessary data, but I wasn't sure what to do with it.

I decided to define two archetypical batters: one being a slow-footed power hitter and the other a speedy line-drive type hitter. The players were sorted in slow/medium/fast and power/medium/line-drive categories. The slow/power combination would be defined as a type 1 hitter and a fast/line-drive hitter would be a type 9. Other hitters would fall in between and would be rated a 3, 5, or 7 depending on which archetype they were closest to.

I wasn't able to obtain separate Exhibition Stadium and Skydome home/road splits for 1989, so that season was not included. All batters who have had at least 1500 AB in a Blue Jays uniform from 1990-2002 were included in the study. Here are their home and road OBP/SLG/OPS stats:


player speed/power type OBP/SLG/OPS ROAD OPS Ratio
Molitor P med/med 5 .412/.523/.935 (.370/.446/.815) 1.146
Fernandez T med/line 7 .400/.470/.870 (.366/.394/.761) 1.144
White D fast/line 9 .344/.466/.811 (.315/.399/.714) 1.136
Carter J med/power 3 .313/.503/.816 (.313/.442/.755) 1.081
Alomar R fast/line 9 .395/.472/.867 (.374/.432/.807) 1.074
Delgado C slow/power 1 .400/.573/.973 (.387/.535/.921) 1.056
Sprague E slow/power 1 .322/.419/.741 (.314/.406/.720) 1.030
Borders P slow/line 5 .290/.401/.691 (.294/.377/.671) 1.029
Stewart, S fast/line 9 .381/.448/.829 (.361/.445/.806) 1.028
Cruz, J fast/power 5 .343/.458/.802 (.323/.466/.789) 1.016
Fletcher, D slow/med 3 .321/.410/.731 (.323/.409/.732) 0.999
Gonzalez, A med/med 5 .306/.381/.687 (.307/.392/.699) 0.983
Green S fast/power 5 .338/.506/.844 (.355/.504/.859) 0.982
Olerud, J slow/med 3 .401/.461/.862 (.397/.482/.879) 0.980


Note that the OBP calculation doesn't include sac flies, so it isn't precise. The final column lists is the ratio of home OPS to road OPS.

Sorting the 14 hitters according to type into 3 groups, the results were: Type 7/9 = 1.096 OPS ratio; Type 5 = 1.031 OPS ratio; Types 3/1 = 1.029 OPS ratio.

To the extent that such a small sample of players tells us anything, it is that quick line drive hitters are better suited to the Skydome than slow power hitters.

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