Eliminating Park Factors: Which Pitchers Will Suffer the Most

May 5, 2020

It appears likely that baseball will be played in 2020 but not at normal MLB home stadiums. With park factors becoming obsolete, Nicklaus Gaut examines starting pitchers who would be most hurt by moving out of their home parks and could be fantasy baseball fallers.

After weeks of half-baked proposals cribbed from rejected "BioDome" scripts, there now seems to be a scrape of light at the end of the no-baseball tunnel. MLB seems to be increasingly confident that a 2020 season will be played, whether it's playing all games in one location (the Arizona plan), playing in multiple warm-weather hubs (Arizona, Florida, Texas), or the newest proposal calling for geographically-aligned divisions.

When baseball returns, pitcher paradises like San Francisco, Miami, and Seattle could be a thing of the past.  At least until 2021, that is. That means the days of going to the waiver wire and saying things like, "I guess I'll go with Tommy Milone at home?', are gone. It also means that many more popular fantasy options who used to be propped up by their pitcher-friendly home venue will now have the bright light of truth shine down on their true mediocrity.

Let's look at some of the pitchers who could be hurt the most by pitching in less friendly confines than they would've had pre-pandemic.

Carlos Martinez, St. Louis Cardinals

168 ADP in NFBC (SP 46)

2019: 48.1 IP, 4 W, 53 K, 3.11 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 24 SV

After Jordan Hicks went down following Tommy John surgery, Martinez stepped in to fill the gap for the Cardinals and spent his year in the bullpen. He performed admirably in the role, saving 24 games in 27 chance and posting a 3.11 ERA over 48 innings. Martinez is set to return to the starting rotation in 2020 and people seem to be excited about this prospect, given a nearly top-150 ADP

I find this confusing as a St. Louis resident because last time I checked, Martinez was still unable to consistently get out left-handed batters. However, sometimes distance from the rotation makes the fantasy heart grow fonder and Martinez's year and a half in the bullpen has apparently convinced fantasy players that he is ready to get back to earning as he has in years past.

According to the Razzball player-rater, Martinez was a top-25 starting pitcher from 2015-2017 before taking a big step back in 2018, finishing as the 94th overall pitcher. He finished with only 118.2 IP due to two different trips to the IL and being moved to the bullpen for the final six weeks of the season. Having not started a game since July 30 of 2018, Martinez is currently being drafted in the range of Matthew Boyd, Robbie Ray, and Kenta Maeda (and 30 spots ahead of the rising German Marquez). Will he be worth the price, given what the future outside of St. Louis could hold for him in 2020?

Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey

Did you know that Busch Stadium is kind of a sneaky pitcher's park for both sides of the plate? Using Baseball Prospectus park factors, Busch had the 24th-lowest run factor for right-handed batters and the 25th-lowest for left-handed batters in 2019. This sort of run suppression has been a boon for Martinez, particularly given his struggles against lefties. Perhaps people have forgotten because of the relative success he had against them as a reliever:

Not exactly an ace against the other-handers but also not atrocious.  But once again; as a reliever. How were Martinez's numbers versus lefthanders when he last spent a full year in the rotation?

Martinez 2017 L/R Splits

Could've just been an off-year, right? He did, after all, finish as SP 15 on the Razzball player-rater that season. Let's go one more year back and look at 2016 when Martinez finished as SP 20:

Martinez 2016 L/R Splits

I feel like I've been saying this to my fellow St. Louisans for five years but Martinez obviously struggles against left-handers and he always has. He may have had some of those deficiencies mitigated by his move to the bullpen, but was that due to a change in skills or to a ballpark that holds down the offense of his weird-scissor needing nemeses?

No More Home Cooking

Martinez's overall numbers certainly looked better in 2019 but once again the splits tell a different tale. Just how big of a difference was there between pitching at home and on the road in 2019?

Martinez 2019 Home/Road Splits

Those differences are hard to ignore and those numbers shouldn't be very inspiring if we indeed won't have any baseball played at Busch Stadium in 2020. And taking a look at your friendly, neighborhood projection systems, they also don't seem to be very inspired about what successes Martinez has in store:

These things are known:

• Martinez has always had difficulty with left-handed batters, allowing more runs, more walks, with fewer strikeouts.
• Busch Stadium is an underrated pitcher's park - particularly in regards to facing left-handed batters - and a place Martinez likely won't call home in 2020.
• While he seemed to have an inside track by the time spring training was canceled, Martinez wasn't even guaranteed to make the rotation.
• A slightly-worse Chris Bassist. Those are around the numbers that the projections systems are calling for Martinez to put up in 2020. Bassitt has a 432 ADP in NFBC, incidentally.

If you think a (barely) fifth-starter is going to return his current draft price given the numbers above, I have an Arch I'd like to sell you. The best hope for Martinez earning his price could lie with a "demotion" to closer, seeing that the Cardinals still don't have a settled bullpen at the back-end, with Hicks not expected back until sometime in July.

If Martinez struggles early, it might behoove St. Louis to move him back to closer, given their other options for the rotation. Daniel Ponce de Leon was new and improved in spring training and new-signee Kwang-Hyun Kim has a lot going in his favor, as well. Kim was a starter for his entire career in the KBO, would be the only Cardinals left-hander, and has a clause in his contract that keeps the Cardinals from demoting him to the minor leagues.

Buyer beware on Martinez because I'd bet upwards of eight dollars that his timeline in 2020 goes from mediocre starter to part-time closer, to set-up man for Jordan Hicks.

Kyle Hendricks, Chicago Cubs

155 ADP in NFBC (SP 43)

2019: 177 IP, 11 W, 150 K, 3.46 ERA, 1.13 WHIP

From one low-key pitcher's park to another because people seem to assume big offense always comes at Wrigley Field. However, opinions may be colored by those games when the wind is blowing out, thus turning every can of corn into a possible home run. However, the 2019 park factors tell a different story, particularly for left-handed batters.

2019 Baseball Prospectus Park Factors

Kyle Hendricks has set a fine example of what kind of fantasy value can be had on the back of strong ratios over long innings, even if a ton of strikeouts don't come along for the ride. While not the high watermark of 2016 (2.13 ERA, 0.98 WHIP) Henricks has been remarkably consistent since:

The fantasy earnings at Razzball have varied a bit but a lot of the difference was tied to his fluctuating wins total, with his terrific ratios carrying the load, even as the ERA has crept up from the days of yore. He's consistently earned back his draft-day prices but a low-strikeout pitcher like Hendricks will be very sensitive to those shiny ratios rising. And taking a look at his ERA evaluators, my optimism isn't running high that he can keep them polished up:

His FIP may have stayed steady but keep in mind that FIP is better for evaluating in-season performance, while xFIP and SIERA tend to be more predictive in terms of next year's ERA. Looking at the major projection systems, it seems they agree with that sentiment:

Of the $9 that Kendricks was worth on the Razzball player rater (SP 32) in 2019, $6.4 was accounted for by ERA and WHIP. If Kendricks had instead finished this past year with numbers close to the ones above, then his earnings would've looked a lot like Anthony DeSclafani, who finished with a 3.89 ERA and 1.20 WHIP over 167 innings, with 167 strikeouts and nine wins. DeSclafani finished as SP 48 on in 2019 and is being drafted over 100 spots later than Hendricks in 2020.

Even if he were to play a normal season at the friendly confines of Wrigley, Hendricks is a poor buy at his current 155 ADP given the downward trend that the peripherals seem to portend for his ratios. But if Chicago is taken out of the equation, Hendricks could truly suffer. With a strikeout-rate that is unlikely to ever increase, even moderate bumps in his ERA and WHIP will make it extremely difficult to earn back his draft-day price.

Chris Archer, Pittsburgh Pirates

247 ADP in NFBC (SP 67)

2019: 119.2 IP, 3 W, 143 K, 5.19 ERA, 1.41 WHIP

Why is Chris Archer still a thing? Won't we ever learn? While his strikeouts have mostly stayed steady over the years, Archer's ratios have risen steadily every year since 2015, finishing with the horrible rates above. Archer's 2019 season was finished by a trip to the IL with shoulder inflammation and he's now pitched just a combined 268 innings over the past two seasons, after averaging over 200 IP per season in the previous four.

Perhaps its the fascination with his devastating slider that makes fantasy players continually go back to the well. With a 23.6% SwStr% that was the fifth-highest among starters who threw at least 500 and a 36.1% K-rate,  Archer has made a career off of flashing that slidepiece.

via Gfycat

However, one-trick ponies usually get put out to pasture (or the bullpen) and Archer may have only been delaying the inevitable by pitching the last season and a half in the run-suppressing environment of PNC Park.

2019 Baseball Prospectus Park Factors

Life overall is pretty decent for right-handed batters, even if hitting home runs is difficult. Things are a lot rougher for left-handers, however, with Pittsburgh having the fifth-most difficult environment in baseball. Like with Martinez before, Archer is doubly helped by his ballpark being particularly difficult against the batters he struggles with most. Albeit in an injury-shortened season, it was pretty clear how much he enjoyed the home cooking, posting a 3.92 ERA at PNC, versus a 6.55 ERA on the road.

Even if this were a normal season, I still wouldn't be wasting a late pick on a strikeouts only, ratio-bomb like Archer. What's his best-case scenario? A 4.oo ERA, 1.35 WHIP, and a 27% K-rate? If I'm so desperate for strikeouts that Archer seems worth the risk to my ratios, then something in the draft has gone tragically wrong. I'd rather spend that lotto ticket on Anthony DeSclafani (241 ADP), Garrett Richards (249 ADP), or Alex Wood (262 ADP), all of whom have significantly more upside in the wins category.

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