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Monday, August 7, 2006
Braves better off ‘gone’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thirty-one of the Braves’ final 52 games will be played Turner Field. Who would’ve thought that could be a negative?
No one imagined the Braves would be so much better on the road than at home, but that’s precisely what’s happened. And no, I still haven’t heard a plausible answer as to why it’s happened.
The Braves, entering tonight’s homestand opener vs. Philly, are 29-31 on the road and 22-28 at home. They have the fewest home wins in baseball, fewer even than the putrid Kansas City Royals, whose 38-73 record includes 23 home wins.
Granted, the Braves have played fewer home games than any team except Washington (the Nationals have also played 50), but that disparity doesn’t begin to explain away the Braves’ home record.
They’re just not very good at home, especially lately.
Read this and cringe: The Braves are 10-22 with a 5.39 ERA and 34 homers in 32 home games since May 29, averaging fewer than five runs per game in that stretch.
In their past 35 road games, the Braves are 20-15 with a 4.41 ERA and 69 homers, averaging 5.5 runs.
The Braves have hit 96 road homers while no other NL team has as many as 80. But their 53 homers at home is better than only two other NL teams.
The Braves lead the NL with 334 runs on the road, but rank 14th with 240 runs at home.
Strange thing about this is, the Braves’ performance at home has gone south in a season when home attendance has actually inched upward.
After seeing declining attendance at Turner Field every year from 1998 through 2004, the Braves leveled off last season, and this year have enjoyed a 4-percent attendance increase.
The only Braves regulars who produce better offensive numbers at Turner Field than on the road are Jeff Francoeur and Marcus Giles.
Francoeur is hitting .296 with 13 homers and 46 RBIs in 50 home games, the fourth-highest home RBI total in the NL behind Ryan Howard, Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols.
But Francoeur is hitting just .224 with eight homers and 31 RBIs in 60 road games.
Giles has hit .292 in 50 home games. On the road, he’s hit .239 in 49 games.
Other than those two, most Braves regulars have hit far better away from home.
The extreme example is Adam LaRoche, who has hit .293 with 18 homers, 48 RBIs and a robust .680 slugging percentage in 56 road games. His 18 road homers is tied for second in the NL with Howard, and LaRoche is third in NL road RBIs.
He doesn’t turn into a pumpkin at home, but relatively speaking, it’s close. LaRoche is hitting .247 with five homers, 15 RBIs and a .409 slugging percentage in 47 home games. That’s .247-5-15-.409 at home, .293-18-48-.680 on the road.
Andruw Jones is hitting .284 with nine homers, 37 RBIs and a .489 slugging percentage in 50 home games. But his power numbers spike on the road, where he’s hit .266 with 17 homers, 58 RBIs and a .550 slugging percentage in 57 games.
Chipper Jones has hit .365 with a gaudy 1.024 OPS in 45 road games, and .289 with a .929 OPS in 36 home games.
Brian McCann has hit .359 with nine homers, 31 RBIs and a 1.020 OPS in 46 road games, and .322 with five homers, 21 RBIs and an .873 OPS in 37 home games.
There are others, too. But you get the point.
While the easy answer is to dismiss the difference as a result of Turner Field being more of a pitchers’ park than bandboxes in Cincinnati, Houston and so many other cities, the Braves haven’t had anything like this disparity in recent memory.
Besides, if Turner Field favors the pitchers so much, shouldn’t there also be a greater disparity in Braves pitchers’ home and road numbers?
They have a 4.81 ERA and 64 homers allowed in 60 road games, and a 4.69 ERA and 68 homers allowed in 50 road games. A difference, yes, but nothing remotely close to the hitters’ dichotomy.
It’s extremely tough to make the playoffs with a losing home record. This year or any year.
So maybe you should bake the boys a pie or something, make them feel at home. But maybe not. Maybe you should just boo them and make them feel like they’re on the road? Perhaps fans could hold up large pictures to form a mural depicting a San Diego backdrop? Something. Anything.
Because at this rate, the Braves’ flickering wild-card hopes will be snuffed out by too much time at home in August and September.
