Cabrera at the Coliseum

Pretty good pitchers up there at the top of the list that he faced the most.

If anyone wanted to (and I don’t) they could check out how he’s fared against some of those other pitchers over his career as well.

It’s like ignoring what Holliday did at Coors and only looking at his slash line at away parks.
Take OCab’s numbers and park factor them, don’t take his Coliseum numbers.

to look at. TY for looking it up.

I just guessed that he’d faced mostly good pitchers!

is remind me that one time, Barry Zito won the Cy Young. boy that seems like a long time ago.

not let him face Chad Gaudin at the Coliseum!

I enjoyed taking a glance at it.

Thanks Nate. I missed this a few days ago. So, almost half (72) of the 151 ABs came against the Big 2+3 (Zito, Hudson, Haren, Harden, Blanton). I think that fully explains his lower-than-expected Coliseum line.

I’ve checked Cabrera’s hit locations at the White Sox and Angels park. It’s shorter in the power alleys at the Coliseum (367 feet to “388” feet), so he could pick up some homers in Oakland. I found that 7 of his Anaheim 2B’s could have been homers at the Coliseum, but only 1 of his Chicago 2B’s could have been a homer. Likewise, 3 of his Anaheim fly outs could have been homers at the Coliseum and 1 of his Chicago fly out could have been a homer at the Coliseum.

Career hit charts:
Angels 7 2B→HR (59 2B’s) 3 FO→HR (319 FO’s)
US Cel 1 2B→HR (19 2B’s) 1 FO→HR (138 FO’s)
http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?playerID=111851&statType=1

I also checked his foul ball outs. I compared the Coliseum to where Cabrera played most: US Cellular and Angels. FWIW, his ground ball rate was a tad higher at the Coliseum (maybe Cabrera was consciously keeping it on the ground to avoid the huge Coliseum foul ball territory). When Cabrera did fly out at the Coliseum, a much higher rate of 15.2% of them were in foul territory.
Park… GO/FO GO/FO FoulOut/FO
Angels 256/319 0.80 25/319 .078
US Cel 124/138 0.90 16/138 .115
McAfee 44/46 0.96 7/46 .152

So, over 4 years in Anaheim and Chicago, 12 of Cabrera’s doubles and fly outs “could have” been homers at the Coliseum. That’s 3 a year. But to homer at the Coliseum, you have to elevate (and hit charts don’t tell me that), so I think 1 or 2 more homers is likely. Cabrera has averaged 8 homers per year, so he may have 9 or 10 homers next year. This is negligible. And probably fully countered by the higher number of foul outs. I think the normal park factor adjustments should be sufficient to adjust Cabrera’s stats.

.706 is my new projected OPS for Cabrera this year. I feel recent years are more indicative of expected performance, so I used 16% of 2005’s OPS, 22% of 2006, 28% of 2007, and 34% of 2008. I also adjusted for Park Factors using EQA’s PF (and yes, the Coliseum was a bit more of a hitter’s park than Anaheim in 2 of those years):
.706 = .674*.16*1.01 + .738*.22*1.01 + .742*.28*.977 + .705*.34*.960

I do not fully trust the projections of the experts. I think they often overemphasize last year’s performance (vs. the last 3-4 years performance). Often, last year could have been a down year due to a (possibly unpublicized) injury…or hating to show up for work since you are in Ozzie Guillen’s doghouse the whole year.

That said, Cabrera had a down year in 2005 (possibly explained by changing leagues) and in 2008 (Guillen’s doghouse?). But Cabrera’s career OPS is .721, so his .738 and .742 OPS in 2006 and 2007 probably just meant that he overachieved a bit. And he underachieved a bit in 2005 and 2008. I feel comfortable about my .706 OPS projection.