Originally Posted by ls7plus
No, Brian. While I don't mean to be argumentative, accuracy is at stake here. The correct term is not "penalizing," it is properly termed "correctly evaluating," with as many analytic factors as possible factored into the process. How are Walker and Helton significantly different (aside from possibly playing more games, thus giving them a quantitative, but not qualitative edge) from the following additional Coors players? Nolan Arenado, career--.320 BA, .984 OPS, 108 HR home vs .263 BA, .787 OPS, 78 HR road; Dante Bichette, career--.328 BA, .938 OPS, 177 HR home vs .269 BA, .730 OPS, 97 HR road; Trevor Story, career--.290 BA, .971 OPS, 55 HR home vs .246, .752 OPS, 33 HR road. And you can go on and on through the history of the Rockies at Coors. The point is that MANY Rockies players developed great to even spectacular stats PRIMARILY BECAUSE THEY PLAYED THEIR HOME GAMES AT COORS FIELD, which made mediocre to good to very good players APPEAR to look like HOF'ers, when their performance under neutral playing conditions quite clearly reveals that they were not in fact great players. This is beyond any rational dispute. They didn't have to adjust their hitting style or approach at the plate to achieve this effect--it was indeed as if they had just been dropped off into a location where they were playing their home games against, if not little league (a bit of a facetious exaggeration), certainly a high level of high school to college level of competition.
Ott, on the other hand, learned to pull the ball more at the Polo Grounds, while changing his style to hit more doubles and triples and for a higher average on the road. Thus the .918 ROAD OPS, marking him clearly as among the true all-time greats (there is almost always an advantage in hitting at home, which the 2015 New York Times Bestseller, "Big Data Baseball," proved statistically to be due to home players receiving more favorable calls on pitches--umps don't like to be booed either!). Klein also pulled the ball to take advantage of Baker Bowl's dimensions, and was able to do so far, far better than any other player who ever played there (and it should be remembered that while he played a maximum of 77 home games there each season, visiting teams and players would play there also 22 times per year). In addition, Klein hit his 4 home runs in one game not at Baker Bowl, but at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, then one of the largest parks in the major leagues.
Best wishes,
Larry
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