Whomever designed that park in Philadelphia was an idiot. The home-road run numbers are the same as Coors Field.
In elementary school, I had a math teacher who attempted to instruct our young minds of mush on the finer points of mathmatics. When it came to equations with multiple unknown variables, the teacher would explain how you can not compare an X and a Y. "It's like comparing bannanas and apples, you can't do it. There's no such thing as bannanapps."
And so Mr. Gammons, I beg to differ with your comparison. To wit:
Total Runs Home
Rockies 333 65%
Phillies 357 57%
Where did I get these statistics? Where did I dig deep down through columns and columns of numbers, working abacuses [abaci?] with each hand and high level calculus with both hemispheres of my brain?
On ESPN.com. Your employer. And I used the EZ-Calc function on my cell phone. Clearly, really high level stuff.
When Gammons -- and anyone else for that matter -- likens Citizens Bank Park to Coors Field, they are not only ignoring simple arithmetic, they are also ignoring altitude. Ask any pitcher who has appeared in a game at Coors Field (or the Rockies AAA affiliate in Colorodo Springs, or the Oakland A's affiliate in Sacramento) and he will tell you that pitches do not break or bite whatsoever and one fatigues very quicky. Citizens Bank Park is at roughly 45 feet above sea level; atmospheric pressure is not a concern in terms of aerodynamics or respiratory physiology.
Let's stop and think for a minute, it's not that complicated. There are two reasons games at The Bank end up with scores reminiscent of games at The Linc:
1. The Phillies' lineup can just plain hit.
2. The Phillies' pitching just plain gets hit.
Several weeks ago we marvelled at the way the Phillies dominated their opponents. Lately, we've been aghast at how the Phillies have been dominated. Despite how different these two stretches of play have appeared, there is one thing that is very similar: The Phillies allowed 5.00 runs per game when they were streaking to the heavens, and 5.08 runs per game as they plummeted back to earth.
The only difference is that the Phillies ran into some good pitching in the form of the Boston Red Sox -- the Sox recent stretch of good play has been fueled in part by great performances from the mound. And as we all know, good pitching beats good hitting. In other words, as the Phillies batters knocked the cover off of the ball for a stretch, it covered up the fact that the pitching was very mediocre.
It's important to keep the differences between Citizens Bank Park and Coors Field in perspective. One of the reasons the Rockies are a bad team year in year out is that they can not develop or acquire good pitching -- all of which is due to the deserved reputation of Coors Field as a place where pitchers go to die. What pitcher in their right mind would want to go there?
The more Citizens Bank Park is unfairly labelled "Coors Lite" or "Coors Field East", the harder it will become for the Phillies to acquire and develop good pitching. And if the 2004-2005 Phillies have taught us anything, it's that no matter how many runs the team scores, it doesn't matter if the other team scores more.
Now that is higher math, Mr. Gammons.
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More on Citizens Bank Park...
..."Factoring in the Park Factor"
..."Recent Trends and Recently New Ballparks"
...ESPN.com's Park Factors [Update: As several readers have pointed out (see comments section), the ESPN site seems to yield very inconsistent data.]
...The odd configuration of foul ground at Citizens Bank Park.
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More on higher math...
...12 > 8
