Another question here. Thanks for answers on my last one.

What is the reason you choose a ballpark? I'm wondering how much it helps. I assume a lot since I hear people talk about it a lot, but I haven't quite figured out what works. For example, if you have a pitcher heavy team, would you choose a hitter's park because you feel like your staff can handle that and it boosts your anemic offense, or would you pick Petco and just try to dominate on the mound?

Pitching heavy vs hitting heavy isn't the way to look at it, the key is to consider the type of hitter and type of pitcher on your roster, as well as how many innings and PAs you have, and choose the park that best fits that.

Ballparks definitely have an impact but there is a lot of noise in the data in individual seasons, if you've ever played a league where everyone has the same ballpark you will see crazy home/road splits for some teams due to pure luck.

Home runs are where I see the most difference here. If your pitchers have a weakness for giving up the long ball, select a park that will help them minimize homers. Then with your offense, try to select guys who can score a lot without depending on a bunch of home runs.

In most leagues, you should be able to pick a park that best suits your strategy. I tend to choose parks with positive HR factors and negative for singles because those parks are the most disadvantageous for teams that are built around slap hitters and I believe in having power-based offenses. In higher caps, it matters less because you have the ability to pick any player.

In lower cap leagues, it's to your advantage to take an extreme pitchers park like AT&T, because you won't need as many IPs, which means you can allot more salary to quality over quantity. (This is the biggest flaw of the sim, using pitch count to drive fatigue). You can get by with 1250-1300 IPs in an 80M cap in a pitcher's park.

If you instead pick a park like Coors or Hilltop or Fenway or any other big offensive park, good luck with 1250 innings.

Posted by schwarze on 1/8/2025 11:52:00 AM (view original):
In lower cap leagues, it's to your advantage to take an extreme pitchers park like AT&T, because you won't need as many IPs, which means you can allot more salary to quality over quantity. (This is the biggest flaw of the sim, using pitch count to drive fatigue). You can get by with 1250-1300 IPs in an 80M cap in a pitcher's park.

If you instead pick a park like Coors or Hilltop or Fenway or any other big offensive park, good luck with 1250 innings.

Is AT&T an extreme pitcher's park? Rated +1 1B, it will have more hits overall than even a neutral park like WIS Park. I've always placed it in the same category as Municipal - great for high average, non-HR hitters.

Thanks for the tips everyone!

Posted by d_rock97 on 1/9/2025 2:10:00 PM (view original):
One thing I’ve learned over the years with sports is that the higher scoring the game, the more likely the favorite is going to win. That is why basketball has the least likelihood of underdogs winning.

Maybe it’s ego, but I do consider most of my teams the favorite to win, therefore I always choose extreme hitters parks like Hilltop and the Palace to boost scoring.

This is a very interesting perspective that I had not thought about

Let's say I pick Sportsman Park or The Royals Park that's for teams with teàms have doubles and triples right?

Ballparks are overrated if you don't have an extreme team. Biggest factor for me is stamina, if I'm worried about tired players I pick a low 1B rating. HR rating depends on whether i expect to hit more than I give up. Speed teams better suited for low scoring games, so pitchers ballpark. If nothing else is going on i might draft a lot of doubles and pick a 2B heavy park, not sure how much it helps.