Tidbits From "According To STATS"

[Greg Ambrosius]

Every month the data guys do an "According to STATS" newsletter with some interesting MLB trends. Kudos to Ethan D. Cooperson, Dillon Tung, Matt Benson, Don Zminda and Meghan Sheehan for their fine work!

According to STATS ...

In the 2010 season, the winning percentage of home teams throughout MLB was .559 - the highest this figure had been in 32 years (.573 in 1978). Over the last two seasons, however, home field has proven to be much less of an advantage. Teams playing in their home park in 2011 had a winning percentage of .526, lowest in MLB in 10 years, and this year are only slightly better, at .528. The aggregate .526 home-field winning percentage in 2011 and 2012 combined is the lowest in any two-year span since the strike-shortened 1994-1995 campaigns (.525).

However, there are a couple MLB teams that apparently haven’t gotten the memo that superior play at home is a thing of the past. The Houston Astros, sporting MLB’s second-youngest active roster, are 24-25 at Minute Maid Park this season - and an abysmal 10-41 on the road. Houston’s .196 road success rate is the fifth-lowest by any team in modern Major League history. Since the end of World War I, only the 1935 Boston Braves (13-65, .167) and 1945 Philadelphia A’s (13-63, .171) found the going rougher away from their home park

Besides the Astros, the Pittsburgh Pirates are the only team with at least 10 more home wins than road wins in 2012 - and the difference is all in the team’s pitching. The Bucs have MLB’s second-lowest home ERA at 2.37, trailing only the Giants’ 2.35 mark; on the road, the Pirates’ ERA is 4.62, ranking 24th in MLB. Pittsburgh’s breakdown is especially striking in its starting pitching: a 23-12 record and 2.50 ERA by the team’s starters at PNC Park, compared to 19-22, 5.61 away from home. A.J. Burnett best illustrates the team’s disparity: 7-0, 2.00 at home, compared to 5-3, 5.70 on the road.

One other MLB team deserves mention for a home-road disparity. The San Francisco Giants have hit 46 home runs in 50 road games, compared to just 16 in 48 games at AT&T Park. You have to go back 20 years to find the last MLB team to average less than the Giants’ 0.33 homers per home game, and there are three individual players, led by Arizona’s Jason Kubel, with at least as many homers in their home park as SF has as a team.

MLB Leaders in Home Runs at Home, 2012
Jason Kubel, Arz 17 in 177 AB

Miguel Cabrera, Det
16 in 186 AB
Curtis Granderson, NYY 16 in 172 AB

Ryan Braun, Mil
15 in 182 AB

Josh Willingham, Min 15 in 167 AB

Edwin Encarnacion, Tor 15 in 161 AB

Giants' Total: 16 in 1565 AB

For the second straight season, and third in the last four, the Detroit Tigers’ Justin Verlander leads all major leaguers in pitches thrown. In 2010, Verlander ranked second in total pitches - just three behind Dan Haren, who split that season between the Diamondbacks and Angels. All told, Verlander has unleashed 14,000 pitches since 2009; only Felix Hernandez, at 13,162, is within 1,000 pitches of Verlander’s total in that span! Haren ranks third in total pitches since 2009, with a total of 12,762.

In Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera, the New York Yankees have a combined 319 career wins and 608 saves currently on the disabled list. Pettitte and Rivera are linked in another way: in their time as Yankee teammates, Rivera has saved 68 Pettitte wins, the highest total among any winner-saver combination since the save became an official stat in 1969. Second on the list are the 57 saves by Dennis Eckersley of Bob Welch wins, followed by another Rivera tandem: he saved 49 Mike Mussina wins.

The Philadelphia Phillies rank seventh among all teams in hits this season, yet the Phils rank only 16th in runs per game (4.28). A key problem for the Phillies has been an inability to score runners from third base with less than two outs. In their plate appearances with runners on third and less than two outs (and excluding those plate appearances which result in neither an at-bat nor a run scored), the Phillies have plated the runner on only 45.7 percent of their opportunities - the lowest such rate in MLB. The San Diego Padres have the next-lowest success rate, at 46.2, while the Toronto Blue Jays lead the pack at 65.0 percent, just ahead of the Chicago White Sox’ figure of 64.2 percent. The MLB average is 53.6 percent of plate appearances with a runner on third and less than two outs result in the run being scored.

Of the 36.0 innings pitched by the Boston Red Sox’ Vicente Padilla this season, 21.1 innings worth of work have occurred in the eighth inning - with very good success. Padilla has a 1.69 ERA in the eighth inning, compared to a 6.14 figure when pitching in any other inning. Between June 3 and July 13, the Red Sox went 34 consecutive games without allowing an eighth-inning run.