I saw this thread last night on Sixpack, started by patdog who is a regular there (not that I'm a pack lurker or anything), and I thought it was an interesting discussion on home runs hit by MSU teams the last several seasons at home vs. on the road, and if there is a possible drop off at home because of Dudy Noble being a pitcher's park. Here's patdog's original post to start the thread:
I honestly don't know how this is going to turn out, but I'm going to look home runs for both teams in 2010-2011 conference games. That's 60 games total home and away against the same teams so any differences in ballparks will even out. My guess is that there will be more HRs hit in the road games but the difference won't be huge. We'll see.
2011 - 18 HRs in home games, 38 total so that makes 20 in the road games.
2010 - 31 HRs in home games, 90 total so that makes 59 in the road games.Totals - 56 at home, 79 on the road for 41% of all home runs hit in Starkville and 59% on the road.
Bottom line, somewhere in the middle. Dudy Noble is definitely a pitchers park, but it's not a graveyard. And damn, that's a lot of home runs in 2010.
Now State has not, at least in recent years, been known for its long ball prowess, but even those numbers are a bit surprising in the difference between the 2010 and 2011 seasons. The post was started to talk about the potential for Dudy Noble to be a graveyard for hitters, but eventually worked its way towards the talk of that being when the bats were implemented, which makes a difference. One commenter in the thread made a good comment that you should also look at the opposing teams #'s at Dudy Noble in 2010 and 2011 to truely find out if it's a pitchers park. It would also be good to look at more years to give a wider data set, and maybe to look at numbers from the late 90's when home runs were king. At the least, patdog gave us a topic to cover during this long, dreadful summer. Thanks pat!
The post also includes some talk about stadium modifications, which we love reading about here at FWTCT. Hey, it even has sketches! Go check it out, and join the discussion.
Make sure to read patdog's post and the corresponding thread over at Sixpackspeak HERE.