When trying to project if a prospect will be able to produce at the major league level, it’s not as simple as looking at stats. Of course, you never really know how they will perform against the top level competition, but it’s also hard when the minor league stats are skewed because of where they are playing. How do you normalize the stats when you want to project them to a major league level? This is where Park Factors come into play.
Park factors give you an idea of how a park plays compared to other parks within the same level of competition. Any Mets fan who has been following the Las Vegas 51s knows that it’s a hitter friendly park, but how do you relate that? How much of a hitter’s park is it really? Park factors can weigh in many different categories, but the main ones used in comparisons are Runs, Hits, 2B and HRs. Here’s a chart showing the 4 categories at AAA for the 2013 season:
| 1 | Albuquerque | 122 | 111 | 116 | 122 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Reno | 113 | 106 | 111 | 109 |
| 2 | Col. Springs | 110 | 105 | 103 | 98 |
| 16 | Tucson | 110 | 104 | 111 | 100 |
| 5 | Las Vegas | 106 | 103 | 105 | 116 |
| 9 | Okla. City | 104 | 105 | 102 | 94 |
| 14 | Salt Lake | 104 | 103 | 102 | 96 |
| 10 | Omaha | 100 | 100 | 100 | 121 |
| 12 | Round Rock | 100 | 100 | 95 | 104 |
| 4 | Iowa | 97 | 96 | 93 | 101 |
| 3 | Fresno | 94 | 99 | 92 | 100 |
| 7 | Nashville | 93 | 97 | 102 | 92 |
| 6 | Memphis | 91 | 94 | 93 | 87 |
| 13 | Sacramento | 90 | 93 | 96 | 82 |
| 15 | Tacoma | 88 | 92 | 91 | 101 |
| 8 | New Orleans | 85 | 92 | 90 | 94 |
To read this chart, you need to know what the numbers represent. 100 is average. Take a look at the top team, Albuquerque. With a park factor of 122 in runs, that stadium produced 122 runs for every 100 runs produced in the average AAA Pacific Coast League park. That is an extreme hitter’s park. 122 would be 4th in the MLB, behind Texas and just ahead of Cincinnati. Let’s take a look at Las Vegas park factors.
| Rk | Tm | PF_R | PF_H | PF_2B | PF_HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Las Vegas | 106 | 103 | 105 | 116 |
Overall, Las Vegas didn’t play like an extreme hitter’s ballpark in 2013, but it did play very home run friendly. It still is on the hitting friendly side, with a Park Run Factor of 106, 5th in the PCL. The Park Home Run Factor was at 116, which is 3rd highest. So, the next step would be to compare these stats to the MLB park factors. Citi Field plays like an overall pitchers park, with a Park Run factor of 87, and a Park Home Run Factor of 84 (these numbers are over a 4 year period). Obviously, moving from Vegas to Citi Field is going to have a significant impact on the amount of production a player puts out. This explains why a player like Juan Lagares can hit 3 HRs in just 78 ABs while playing in AAA in 2013, but once he hit the majors he had just 4 HRs in 392 ABs. He went from 1 HR ever 26 AB to 1 HR every 98 AB. That’s a tremendous difference. When advanced stats say they take park factors into consideration, they are doing the math for you to try and normalize those stats. If you look at 2Bs, the Las Vegas 2B factor is just 106, and the 2013 Citi Field 2B factor was 110. That’s pretty equal between AAA and MLB. Lagares had 3 2Bs in 78 ABs in AAA (1 2B every 26 AB) and he had 21 2B in 392 ABs at the MLB level (1 2B every 19 AB). You can see that those home runs he was hitting in Vegas are turning into 2Bs in Citi Field. Lagares isn’t really known for his power, but he is a very good doubles hitter. In Binghamton he was hitting them about 1 every 17 AB and that was about a neutral park for doubles.
Now that you hopefully understand how to read between the lines as far as differentiating between the different leagues here is a list of all the park factors for all the Mets franchises from top to bottom. This is just for the 2013 season.
| Tm | PF_R | PF_H | PF_2B | PF_HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Las Vegas | 106 | 103 | 105 | 116 |
| Binghamton | 96 | 94 | 102 | 105 |
| Fort Myers | 102 | 103 | 111 | 90 |
| Brooklyn | 89 | 99 | 94 | 76 |
| Savannah | 94 | 97 | 92 | 79 |
One quick look at that table and it’s not hard to see why Brooklyn and Savannah are the worst possible parks to try a hit a HR. They aren’t too friendly with 2Bs either. Brooklyn and that 76 Park Home Run factor is among the lowest in all of organized baseball. In terms of the leagues the Mets play in, only Augusta in the South Atlantic League (A ball) has a lower rate. So when you are looking at stats for the Mets exciting prospects coming up, don’t be worried when they didn’t hit home runs in Brooklyn or Savannah or St. Lucie, because they are dead air parks. However, the opposite is true as well. If a player manages to hit some home runs in those stadiums, then you should be kind of excited to see how that translates at a higher level. This is why Kevin Plawecki has risen so quickly in the Mets system. In Brooklyn in 2012 he hit 7 HRs in 216 ABs. The league leaders in the New York-Penn league (A-) had 10 and they played their home games in a stadium with a Park HR factor of 116, compared to Brooklyn’s 76. Brandon Nimmo also had 6 home runs as well. Plawecki has not hit an amazing amount of homers, but has shown flashes of being a 15-20 HR a year player based on looking at these stats and knowing how hard it is to hit a home run there.
In a nutshell, here’s a quick guide to how to read each level of stats (Remember, the Citi Field Park overall Park Factor is just 84!):
• AAA (Vegas) – Downplay the HRs. They will turn into 2Bs or outs in Citi Field.
• AA (Binghamton) – Again, downplay the HRs.
• A+ (St. Lucie) – Doubles hit here are about the same level as Citi Field and the Park HR factor is the closest out of any level.
• A (Savannah) – Power dies here. Expect more HRs at the next level.
• A-(Brooklyn) – Power also dies here. Expect more HRs when they get called up.
Personally, I look at 2Bs when I’m looking at minor leaguers. I believe that a lot of parks turn HRs into doubles (and the Park Factors do show that) and that if they can hit MLB pitching, they will hit 2Bs at a rate extremely similar to the levels they did in the minors, or close to it. For pitchers, however, the story is extremely different and I’ll cover that in another article.
Where did you get these park factors from?
How did they calculate them?
Why are you only using one-year factors?
These were all posted on minor league central. I only used one year because I’m not actually quite sure you can just average out 1 year and another and get a correct number. They didn’t post a rolling average.
The whole PCL is a hitters league.
There’s actually two distinct sections of the PCL.
There used to be three Triple-A leagues — the two we have now and the American Association. They disbanded the AA and put those teams into the other two leagues. So the PCL teams that came from the old AA (Iowa, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Omaha) are not nearly as hitter-firendly as the rest of the league.
With all the talk about Vegas being so hitter friendly, it’s very surprising to me to see that they barely made the top 5.
Right Brian,I had forgotten about that.
Well, it’s a great article. Most of us understood that Brooklyn and Savannah were difficult parks to hit home runs, particularly Brooklyn for the lefthanders, but it is very helpful to assign some numbers to that general knowledge. Many thanks.
I struggle with “the new math” in baseball. I’ve just purchased. ” Baseball By The Numbers” and will get there.
This is a well written and excellent article for a reader like me.
Each night I open the minor league Ap and read the box score and stats of each Mets affiliate. I listen to their radio broadcasts when time allows.
I’m able to see the B Mets when they come North. It’s fun to follow the progress of prospects, particularity with my own eyes, as I did with Dilson H this week.
Thank you for the article.
Provided Dilson can actually hit major league pitching, he will post power stats similar to what he is doing now.
Nice piece! I look forward to reading more about the pitching numbers, so I learn not to get too excited by Savannah success in that regard.
I think it’s important to recognize that park factors are meant to compare between teams within a league. It’s a very dangerous thing to assume that if an A-ball team has similar park factors to an MLB team that we should assume a player will hit similarly there — no matter how many qualifiers you put into it.
Right. Assuming they can hit major league pitching (a huge assumption) it kind of helps you gauge the type of hitter you can expect to see. I think it’s often harder to hit homers in the minors because the stadiums are often a bit larger and the fences a but higher, but I’m not going to assume they could hit once they reach the majors. I would love if the Mets would find a AAA stadium that plays chooser to Citi field, so both hitters and pitchers know what to expect.
This is a fantastic article, and gives tremendous insight into how players develop through the system, and how that might change if such a stadium change takes place. While I agree with Brian and Marc’s point about adjusting to MLB pitching being the larger factor, moving from stadium to stadium within the minors either can help develop how players improve, or can sometimes factor into player’s losing confidence and/or never making it. I look forward to the pitching report! Excellent book suggestion Peter! I will pick that up myself.
These measures are seriously problematic. The factors are based on the statistics from the parks, and used to adjust how good a team that plays in that park is. But this ignores the fact that maybe a lot of runs are scored, hits occur, doubles occur, etc. in a park because the home team is very good or very bad. In essence, these measures don’t isolate the park.