park factors

Wow, thanks, John - I had no idea that lots of home runs were hit at the Cell.

It's interesting to me that he points out the difference in homeruns hit at the new park in Cincy from the first year to this. It makes me wonder if ballparks can gain a reputation based on the first year of play there, even if numbers from subsequent years don't bear out that reputation. The most glaring example to me is Enron Field/Minute Maid Park. The first year the Astros played there, they gave up a ton of homeruns and played a lot of slugfests. A lot of people overlook the fact that the Astros pitching staff that year was comprised of a bunch of fly-ball pitchers that had excelled the year before in the Astrodome, Jose Lima being the prime example. As the team has been able to develop young pitchers who are learning to pitch in MMP, the homerun and runs scored numbers have normalized somewhat, still above average but not the ridiculous numbers we saw in 2000, yet people still call it Ten-Run Field. It didn't even make that list of the top 5 HR parks shown in the article linked above.

BP's recent survey of park factors, including the minors:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3289