Coors Light and Reynolds Rap

At the start of Moby Dick, Ishmael says that, whenever he gets so depressed that “it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” he goes to sea. As it happens, we, too, are depressed right now. What depresses us is contemplation of the charred, smoking ruin that is our 2016 Fantasy season, and the hats we want to knock off are those of the arsonists who populate our several pitching staffs.

When this happens to us, however, we don’t go to sea. Rather, we bury ourselves in stats that have nothing to do with the ones that are causing us heartache. Different strokes, we guess—a phrase, by the way, that assumes a whole new meaning when you get to be as old as we are.

Thus, we determined to investigate the effect, if any, of the raising of the fences at Coors Field. As you undoubtedly know, Coors is a notoriously hitter-friendly park, and as you probably know, before the start of this season, the Rockies raised the outfield fences in order, said their General Manager, to make the stadium “more fair to pitchers.” The fence down the line in left field is now five feet higher than it was, and the fence in right-center is nine feet higher.

This has to make a statistical difference, we figured. But if you look at the park-factor numbers without separating left-handed and right-handed hitters, it hasn’t mattered much. Teams are scoring runs and getting extra base hits in Coors at about the usual inflated clip, and pitchers are still unhappy about it. But if you separate hitters by handedness, there’s one very interesting fact. Left-handers are still doing about the same, and right-handers are still producing runs, but right-handers are doing it by hitting doubles rather than home runs. Fangraphs’ 2016 park factors aren’t available yet, so we used Baseball Prospectus’s, and what they’re telling us is that right-handers are hitting way fewer home runs and way more doubles than before. Park Factors are commonly calculated with a base of 100, with a factor of 100 constituting a park that is neutral with respect to the statistic in question, and a factor higher than 100 favoring the stat. To give you a bit of context, the Runs Factor at Coors in 2015 was 144, meaning that the ballpark increased runs by 44%, whereas the Runs Factor at extremely pitcher-friendly AT&T Park was 85. Between 2012 and 2015, the Doubles Factor at Coors for right-handed hitters averaged 107 and the Home Run Factor averaged 110. This year, though, the doubles factor is 194 and the home run factor is 90.

This change cries out for rational explanation. It may, of course, merely be a function of small sample size, but what fun would that be? And we thought we knew what the key to the explanation would be. New to the Rockies this year is Mark Reynolds, the very embodiment of the free-swinging, pull-hitting, flyball-lofting, home run-powering slugger. He’s always hit well in Coors, and is having a good season (.307 BA, .375 OBP)—except for the home runs. In 168 plate appearances this season, he’s hit two home runs and 12 doubles. At that pace, he’d hit about 40 doubles (his most ever was 30, in 662 PAs) and fewer than 10 home runs (he’s been in double digits every year since 2007). Thus, we surmised, Reynolds must be hitting a lot of balls down the line and off the newly-heightened left-field wall.

Case closed, correct? Nuh-uh. Mark Reynolds, number 20 lifetime among active home run hitters, comes to Coors, one of the most home run-favoring ballparks in baseball, and turns into—Adam Eaton?? Some of his stats suggest as much: Groundball/Flyball Ratio, 1.82 (his previous high, last season with the Cardinals, 1.05); Groundball Percentage, 46.8 (previous high, ditto, 41.4); Pulled-Ball Percentage, 35.1 (previous high, likewise, 39.9). As fans of both Reynolds and magical thinking, we looked various places for some indication that this transformation was shrewd and intentional.

But of course, it isn’t. Not to be cruel, but the evidence instead suggests that Reynolds (a) has been exceedingly lucky so far this season, and (b) is at the very end of his career. You can see this most clearly in Reynolds’s Batting Average on Balls in Play, which is a preposterous .411, second in MLB. But there’s other, equally compelling evidence. His spray chart reveals a whole lot of ground-ball hits. He’s not hitting the ball hard (27% of the time; previous low 31.2%, last year with the Cardinals). And he’s not hitting it far, as a glance at his spray chart will show you. The clear picture is of a power hitter who’s lost his power, and whose decline, already conspicuous last season, continues apace. And this is a guy—lifetime .232 hitter, weak fielder, no speed—who can’t afford to decline very much more.

So how does this play out for you and the Rockies? We imagine that those of you who picked up Reynolds in the 25th round or so of your drafts are feeling pretty pleased with yourselves. We think he will soon become a headache. Our suggestion: turn him into someone else’s, even at a deep discount. As for the Rockies: If we’re right about Reynolds, it’s hard to see them being able to stick with him much longer. They’re not going to bring Ben Paulsen, who started the season on the strong side of a first-base platoon with Reynolds, back from AAA; for reasons we’ve never fully grasped, they don’t like him much. Wild guess: if the Rockies are in something that seems to them like contention in a month’s time, the toxic and now supernumerary Jose Reyes gets traded to Baltimore for Pedro Alvarez.

And what about the new Coors? Does it or doesn’t it suppress right-handed (or any) power? We’re not sure. Trevor Story hit two triples off the raised right-center field fence in one game in April, but other than that it looks to us as if the raised fences haven’t hurt him. Ryan Raburn, a right-handed pull-hitter, has hit 3 home runs and nothing off the wall down the line in left. As best we can tell, pretty much everyone on the team (including Reynolds, once), of whatever handedness, has gotten a hit or two off one of the raised fences, and maybe that’s enough to skew the stats. Or maybe it’s just a blip after all. Fun to speculate about, though.





The Birchwood Brothers are two guys with the improbable surname of Smirlock. Michael, the younger brother, brings his skills as a former Professor of Economics to bear on baseball statistics. Dan, the older brother, brings his skills as a former college English professor and recently-retired lawyer to bear on his brother's delphic mutterings. They seek to delight and instruct. They tweet when the spirit moves them @birchwoodbroth2.

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Ryan13636
7 years ago

Reynolds has also morphed into a very good defensive first baseman, which will probably keep him getting PT all season. Paulsen can’t hit or field.