Doing something first is hard. Doing something second is easier.
Earlier this summer, Skidmore College softball player Jill Strileckis and Skidmore Math Professor Michael Lopez published an article that looks at the effect that Liberty League softball fields have on runs scored, among other things. You can read it here.
The two found that Skidmore’s Wagner Park is the top hitter’s park in the conference. Naturally, as a former Skidmore baseball player, my immediate reaction to reading their article was to apply the same logic to Liberty League baseball fields. So that’s what I did. And here are the results:
Anything above 1 favors the hitters and anything below 1 favors the pitchers. The farther away from 1, the more extreme the parks’ effect on runs scored.
Skidmore’s David Alexander Castle Diamond ranks right in middle, slightly favoring the pitcher. With winds that seem to be always blowing heavily in from right-field (a left-handed hitter’s excuse for never hitting a collegiate homerun), I had envisioned that Castle Diamond would have favored the pitcher even more. The most pitcher-friendly award goes to Saint Lawrence, where low temperatures must be part of the story. The average high temperature in Canton, NY for the month of April is 53 degrees. It makes it tough to hit when you can’t feel your hands. Compare that to Vassar, the southern-most school and most hitter-fieldly park, where April’s average high temperature is 59 degrees. Yeah, college baseball in upstate New York is freezing.
A few other thoughts/observations:
- Bard and Rochester have the conference’s two turf fields, and both favor the pitcher. This make sense– there’s no such thing as a bad hop on a turf infield.
- Building off that– there is great variability in field, especially infield, quality amongst schools. In my opinion, Skidmore, Union, and Clarkson have the worst infields. More bad hops lead to more hits and errors, and thus, runs scored. Union and Clarkson favor the hitter, and maybe this is the reason why Skidmore only slightly favors the pitcher.
- I allowed a homerun at RIT, so it makes sense that it favors hitters.
Lastly, I want to note that these park factors are just from the 2016 season. I would want to look at results from a few seasons before drawing any concrete conclusions.
Now we have a scientific reasons for your power drought in college!
Power hitting in first eight games in Florida vs. power hitting in first eight league games up north. Biggest factor is temperature effect on bat speed and “pop” in the BBCOR bats. Microwave + Bat Sleeves and let’s see what happens. 😉