It's the Wind, So Run Like the Wind

I had submitted a request to MiLB writer, Jon Mayo, to study Dodd Stadium's situations in a way similar to how he looked at other parks, including San Jose Municipal Stadium (article here) and he posted his response in a mailbag article here. He basically said that the winds there kill any hits to the outfield and there's nothing you can do about that.

Municipal Madness

Speaking of Municipal Stadium, that article noted that the sun, sky, and background keeps the hitters guessing and thus striking out a lot, as well as reducing their batting average as well as their on-base percentage. There are extended quotes from John Bowker, one of the new darlings of the Giants prospect hounds for his great 2007 season, though he did us a disservice by saying that Dodd Stadium was no big deal because he could see the ball there, whereas in San Jose he couldn't see them as well. Here is Bowker's home/road split for 2007 when he was at Connecticut:

Home: .271/.330/.422/.742, 6 HR in 251 AB (42 AB/HR)
Road: .345/.397/.629/1.027, 16 HR in 267 AB (17 AB/HR)

So he was like Michael Tucker at home (Dodd) but Barry Bonds on the road. That's a huge difference.

Ben Copeland was also quoted. He had a big split home/road while at San Jose in 2007, as shown in the article. The odd thing is that Copeland's hit-type split shows significantly less line-drives at home vs. the road, which explains the drop in batting average but not the drop in homers, as he had about the same percentage of flyballs hit. However, Bowker saw a significant drop in flyballs, which led to a drop in HR hit, but they all basically became line drives batted balls, which normally result in an increase in batting average, but as seen above, his BA took a big hit.

All in all, Giants position prospects have been suffering big time trying to hit first in San Jose then in Connecticut. In addition, Mayo noted that "Augusta ... is also a challenging park..." And if the service that provides MLEs on these parks don't account for the park factor correctly, then all the Giants position prospects look worse than they really are while the pitchers look better than they really are.

In any case, our hitters have been getting short shrift while rising through Augusta, San Jose, and Connecticut, because their overall stats don't truly reflect what they are capable of doing. And obviously, some of our pitchers are overrated as their stats are pumped up by these parks. As long as these conditions are not improved in some way, whether by re-configuring Dodd Stadium, as the Giants had been pushing the Defenders to do, or improving the "batter's eye" that Bowker talked about at Municipal Stadium, it will be hard to judge exactly how well our players are doing except when they are extraordinarily good, which is rare for any team, anyhow.