Rox Talk - It's the Weather

Hot Stove News

Not much from the Rox front. Nice to see Baylor back in the purple pinstripes. Hurdle will have two former managers ready to take over when the Rox struggle out of the gate next year. At least it will keep him honest.

It's the Weather, Stupid!

To further my cause in esoteric baseball research I decided to look at the effects on homeruns and weather at Coors Field. Weather data comes from baseball reference. Data includes 2007 and 2008 numbers (grey boxes and line) and includes Rox and opponents homers. Circles are the 2007 and 2008 data points. The rate is determined by taking the total number of homers for the point and dividing this by the number of times that point occurred (i.e., it has been 80 degrees 5 times during the last two years and a total of 9 homers have occurred so the rate is 1.80). So below is temperature and generally the trend is that has it gets warmer the rate of homers increases. The weighted mean temperature at Coors Field over the last two years has been 74 degrees. The average homers hit at Coors over the last two year has been 2.2 a game. Eighty-three degrees has had the most home runs hit (27)

The next graph shows wind speed and home run rate. Generally as the wind increases homers decrease. This graph is independent of the whether the wind is blowing in or out. The weighted average of wind is about 7.5 mph.

The final graph gives the wind direction. Generally we don't have a Wrigley effect. When the wind is blowing in (147 homers, 67 times) a rate of 2.2 and when blowing out (106 homers, 48 times) for a rate of 2.2. Also it seems when that when the wind blows out the wind speed averages about 6.5 mph while when the wind blows in it is about 8 mph. The most homers occur when the wind is blowing in from centerfield (85) although the highest rate is when the wind blows from left to right (which also has on average the higher wind speed).