Andres Gallaraga, Vinnie Castilla, Larry Walker, and many other decent
but not great hitters have put up vastly inflated batting statistics
simply because they played 81 or more games a year at Coors Field.
Early in Colorado's National League membership, some buffoony fans in
their ignorance actually thought these guys were Jimmie Foxxian or Lou
Gehrigian in ability. But gradually, as years passed, true
aficionados have come to discover that ANY FULL-TIME ROCKIES PLAYER
reaches relative hitting numbers that literally defy belief.
Take Walker. His batting average in games at Coors was .334. Same as
Hall of Famer Al Simmons, a truly great hitter. But at all the other
stadiums Larry played in, his BA was ... .289.
Then there was Andres Galarraga, the Big Cat, who was so washed up as
a hitter (and strikeout leader) with the Montreal Expos that he was
one short step away from forced retirement. But a fortuitous last
chance with the Rockies (and strongly rumored steroids assistance)
allowed him to carve out a .331 BA over five seasons with Colorado.
His overall lifetime average? .298.
Vinnie Castilla, who with the Rockies hit 40 or more home runs three
consecutive years, a feat never accomplished by slugging greats like
Mike Schmidt, Mickey Mantle, Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Eddie
Mathews, and Rogers Hornsby. Except for another year toward the end
of his career with the Rockies, Vinnie never hit more than 23 HRs in
seasons playing with other teams.
Additionally, the Baseball Encyclopedia is replete with statistics of
ordinary hitters who played just one season with the Rockies, but had
far-and-away their career years there.
Washington Post sports writer Thomas Boswell brings us up to date on
the subject of Coors Field as a hitter's heaven.
---------------
"Unfair Measures"
By Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
Sunday, October 28, 2007; D01
DENVER
Is baseball, as played here in mile-high Coors Field, really baseball
at all? Before we go there, let me grab your attention.
Imagine two players. Both bat 600 times a year. In a long career, the
first hits .367 and averages 39 homers and 138 RBI. The second, in
four years, hits .364 while averaging 39 homers and 138 RBI. Both have
averages as good as Ty Cobb and more RBI a year than Babe Ruth. So,
they might be the two best hitters in history.
Now, let's look at two other players, prorated over 600-at-bat
seasons. In his career, the first man hits .295 and averages 25 homers
and 92 RBI -- good stats, but not all-star stats for a first baseman.
The second hits .273 with 19 homers and 82 RBI. The Nats' Ryan Church?
The two superstars in the first example are Todd Helton and Matt
Holliday of the Rockies -- when they play at home.
The players in the second example are also Helton and Holliday -- when
they play on the road.
Every other player who has started for the Rockies in the World Series
is a variation on this pattern, except one --Brad Hawpe, who performs
identically at home or away. The ability of altitude -- and high
altitude alone -- to make Cobbs and Ruths of merely good players is
the defining characteristic of baseball when it is played a mile in
the air. Yes, every fly ball travels farther, maybe as much as 10
percent, though experts disagree on how much. Yes, every pitch arrives
at the plate sooner, perhaps adding six inches to a fastball. And,
yes, all pitches designed to curve do not break as much. Curveballers
think Coors is hell on earth.
However, it is the compounding effect of all these factors that makes
baseball here so bizarre. Because the ball travels so far, the fences
must be pushed way back to prevent nightly home run derbies. Coors's
fence from deep left-center field to deep right-center field measures
424, 415 and 420 feet. No other park is nearly as remote. This creates
enormous gaps in the alleys for outfielders to defend. As a result
many balls -- routine outs in every other park -- fall to the grass.
Contact, rather than quality of contact, gets inordinate value here.
Helton, for example, has averaged fewer than 75 strikeouts per season.
Altitude also changes the essential nature of pitching. A hurler with
a good fastball and hard sinker or slider will gain a few inches in
speed here and be slightly more effective than elsewhere in avoiding
solid contact. Change-ups work, too, since hitters often top them.
However, the pitching values established in the sport's other 29
franchises are invalidated here. A high-quality curve or splitter or
knuckleball -- any pitch that must break a lot, rather than swerving a
little at the last instant -- is devalued.
The Rockies required years, and tens of millions of dollars in
squandered contracts to free agent pitchers who depended on big
breaking balls, to realize they had to customize. The infield grass
here was allowed to grow as high as an infielder's eye to help ground
ball pitchers. Finally, this season, Rockies pitchers meshed with
their milieu so well that they allowed only 34 more runs at home than
away.
Now we come to the ironic beauty of this World Series. You'd think
there couldn't possibly be another team with such an extreme
preference for its home digs as the Rockies, who hit .298 with 103
homers and 478 runs in Coors Field, but only .261 with 68 homers and
382 runs on the road. But there is another similar club -- the Red
Sox, who hit .297 with 472 runs in Fenway Park, but batted .262 with
395 runs on the road.
Are the Rockies' feats in Coors Field just a mile-high version of what
Boston does by smacking balls off its left field wall? Should we view
both Fenway and Coors as curiosities to be enjoyed, not aberrations to
annoy us? Or are they different?
For decades, fans have adored Fenway for its Green Monster, deep
triangle in center field, spacious right field, tiny foul territory
and cozy Pesky Pole in right field. It's quirky, individual, unique:
so like life. That's the company line for generations.
As a result, Fenway's sins are forgiven. The game, as played there, is
warped, but how could it be helped? The park had to be squeezed into a
crowded neighborhood. So, the goofy statistics generated in Boston are
accepted. Some hitters, like David Ortiz, do better there than they
could anywhere else. Big Papi has hit .321 in his career at Fenway
and .280 elsewhere. Some pitchers, especially southpaws, are penalized
at birth. Is that "fair?" Baseball's received wisdom about Fenway:
That's life. Get over it.
However, many of those same fans, including me, have disliked Coors
from the day it opened. Baseball at high altitude was a necessary-evil
accommodation that the industry made so that a sports-hungry town
could be brought into the game.
This series has finally forced me to recognize why mile-high baseball
bothers me so much. And why it may not bother others, including 99
percent of the population of this city, at all. I'm one of those
people who finds beauty in the geometry of baseball -- the accidental
distances established in the 1860s, which somehow turned out to be
perfect. At times, Fenway may be a fluky bandbox but at least all the
proportions of the game, all the relative distances that have proved
so enjoyable for so long, are maintained.
If baseball had been invented in Denver, perhaps the bases would be 94
feet apart and the pitchers mound only 59 feet 7 inches from home
plate. Maybe the hitter would only get two strikes, and there would be
10 men on a team, so that there would be enough fielders to cover the
enormous outfield. Or, perhaps, if the sport had begun here, it would
have died here, too, because something hard to define, the very
aesthetics of the sport, would never have come into existence.
In Game 3 of this series, much of what is worst about Coors was on
display as the Red Sox scored six runs in the third inning. Colorado
starter Josh Fogg is not a "Coors-style pitcher." His ERA here this
season was 5.97, as opposed to 4.15 on the road. He doesn't specialize
in either strikeouts or ground balls -- the two results that a pitcher
welcomes here.
The Red Sox may not have played much in Coors before. But they know
the first rule of attack here: Don't stop running. Always take the
extra base. Because every outfielder is, by normal definition, out of
position and every base-running calibration is different. Only the
slowest runners can't go first to third. Anybody should score from
second base on a single.
In that one inning, the Red Sox had seven hits and six runs off Fogg
without a home run. But the lumbering Ortiz scored from second on a
single. Manny Ramirez attempted to do the same and, if he had not
visited the Red Sox' dugout as he rounded third, would have been safe
by feet instead of out by inches. Two runs, not one, scored on a bases-
loaded single by a pitcher because, even for weak hitters, outfielders
must play deeper. And a slicing fly that would have ended most innings
elsewhere eluded the Rockies for an RBI double.
So, what are we to make of the athletic activity being attempted here
at Coors Field? Is it baseball?
For others, including many here, it is a perfectly valid, though
radically different, form of the game. For me, it's junk.
Luckily, the Romans had a phrase for such disputes: "De gustibus non
disputandum est." There is no use in disputing about matters of taste.
When in Denver, do like the Romans. That way, maybe the nice folks
here will let me out of town alive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/27/AR2007...701571.
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