SimLeague Baseball Player's Guide

Picking a Ballpark

While choosing a ballpark may seem arbitrary, it can actually have a profound impact on results. All teams play 81 games in their home ballpark, so it is very important to consider how the team drafted will perform in that park, or, moreover, how other teams will fare in the park.

Many users will build a team to fit in a ballpark, while others will pick a ballpark that fits the team. Either strategy is valid, as long as it is a decision that is fully considered.

After filling a 25 player roster, links will appear to name a team and select a ballpark. Below the ballpark dropdown is a link to ballpark effects. View the list of available ballparks including their teams and years of service, surfaces, dimensions, wall heights, effects and factors. The only items from this list used in the simulation engine are the effects. Surface, park dimensions, wall height and factor are incorporated into the effects, but are not important in the game. In general though, a park with a factor above 1.00 should be more offensive than a park with a factor below 1.00

The effects are illustrated on a -4 to +4 scale where the likelihood of each event is altered by the effect. These ratings are representations of the actual inputs. For instance, a neutral rating will not alter the likelihood of an event, while a +2 may increase its likelihood by a few percent and a +4 a few more percent. The ratings are scaled so that there are about the same number of each value for each type of event. +4 for doubles does not mean the exact same thing as +4 for triples.

Effects are based on actual data where available. Where the data is not available, we approximated the effects utilizing the historical impact of dimensions, factor and wall height. The actual formula for effects compares the total number of the event occurring by the team and its opponents at home compared to the same thing over all road games.

When ultimately deciding on a ballpark, remember that the ballpark affects both teams in the game equally – it just may be better served for the strengths of one team over the other.

All available ballparks in SimLeague Baseball have been updated through the end of the last baseball season.