It’s a good week if you’re a fan of the Mets (no) and Yankees (yes). The New York teams open a pair of new ballparks at a cost of more than $2 billion, with the Mets splitting their first two games in Citi Field and the Yankees opening tonight. If history is an indication, the month of April in their new homes will be good. Unfortunately, it won’t last.
The Wall Street Journal, numbers gurus that they are, took a look at the performance of the five major league teams that have opened new stadiums in the last six years. In April in the year of the opening, they won six of 10 games. The rest of the season? They didn’t even win half of their games. (The Braves, my hometown favs, opened The Ted in 1997 with a torrid 12-2 record in April.)
If there’s an April advantage for teams with new ballparks, it probably has its roots in pitching and defense. Maybe the home team’s advance knowledge of the quirks of the yard — and how to exploit them — give them a palpable edge in the earlygoing. On the whole, these five clubs allowed slightly fewer runs per home game in April than they did later in the year.
But after that first glorious month, the magic wears off. From May 1 forward, the winning percentage for these teams in their new surroundings plummeted to .481 — a pace that supports only 78 wins in a season.
Looks like the Mets have a new excuse for collapsing in September.
Matt Hennie blogs on Atlanta’s gay sports scene (and other stuff) at Project Q Atlanta.
on Apr 16th, 2009 at 11:26 AM
Our newer stadium still has the magic, maybe more magic.
Seattle lost the NBA Sonics and in response, Seattle sports fans have moved their money to the new Quest Field in Seattle’s south side district (SODO). The first season of the Seattle Sounders Football(Soccer) has sold over 20,000 season tickets. This leaves less than 4000 seats for sale at games.
Seattle has one of the biggest LGBT Soccer/Football clubs in the nation, called Rain City Soccer Club.
Full List of Seattle LGBT organized Teams (Many hetro players)
http://www.teamseattle.org
on Apr 16th, 2009 at 3:55 PM
I’m not very impressed by that article. The 2003 Reds were 69-93. The 2008 Nationals were 59-102. Those two were poor teams, so what they did in April is almost meaningless. The 2006 Cardinals were just 83-78, but were 49-31 at home, second-best in the NL. (And went on to win the World Series.)
The 2004 Padres and Phillies both were just 42-39 at home in their new parks and won 87 and 86 respectively overall. But the Padres improved from 63-98 and 35-46 at home in 2003. The 2003 Phils were 86-76 and 49-32 in their last year at the Vet. So their 2004 home record was worse at CBP…but then again, they won more away games.