Do you think more emphasis should be placed on road stats?

With all the discussions around the Cy Young award, and who has been better, I was wondering whether people felt it worth considering road stats slightly ahead of home stats to analyze performance.

The reason for this is simple (though not perfect obviously.) Many players are affected by the park they play in. A pitcher pitching in Petco has an advantage over a pitcher pitching in Houston and all other things being equal, the pitcher in Petco will have much better stats simply because of the home field advantage.

Much of those factors gets erased when a person pitches on the road and while it does not take into account schedule difficulty, it may offer a slightly better idea of a pitchers performance. (Of course it does not take into account the fact that in any given season a pitcher might actually pitch better at home or on the road, and therefore the road would not offer the best picture of full-season performance.)

Looking at this season, the candidates for AL Cy Young include Felix Hernandez, David Price, CC Sabathia and Jon Lester and while Felix and Price pitch in the two best pitchers parks in the country, Lester and Sabathia pitch in two of the top seven.

Looking then at road stats:

Hernandez- 5-8 2.46 ERA 131.2 ERA 113 K's 10 HR
Price- 10-4 3.68 ERA 93 IP 80 K's 7 HR
Lester- 11-3 2.33 ERA 108.1 IP, 132 K's 2 HR
Sabathia- 9.5 3.50 ERA 118.1 IP 91 K's 11 HR

As is expected, Hernandez and Price have been worse on the road than at home (though Hernandez has been great everywhere) while Lester has been better on the road. Sabathia interestingly bucks the trend and has an ERA a full half run better at home.

I'm not sure what it really means, and I know that this does not change how I would vote for Cy Young (Hernandez) but I do think it is interesting, and a little telling of how a player might pitch if they were not playing in a good (or conversely) bad park.

Thoughts?

but for Price his numbers are worse on the road because he gets plenty of road starts against the Red Sox, and Yankees who are good hitting clubs in a good hitting ballparks.

CC pitches in New York, but does not have to face the tough hitting Yankees since he plays for them.

Huffamaniac said:

but for Price his numbers are worse on the road because he gets plenty of road starts against the Red Sox, and Yankees who are good hitting clubs in a good hitting ballparks.

CC pitches in New York, but does not have to face the tough hitting Yankees since he plays for them.

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It's possible that it hurts Price, but I don't think you can use the AL East for Price and dismiss it for Lester and CC. Don't make the mistake of confusing park factor for performance. Tampa may be the worst hitting park in baseball, but they still have scored the 3rd to most runs in baseball, so no matter where it is, facing them is tough.

The East has the top three (Yanks, Boston and Tampa in that order) with Toronto is 11.

I'd say it depends on what cards a person is pimping at a given time.... :lol:

They have stats that normalize for competition, ball-park, and defensive play.