I have posted teams in Coors Field in two OLs: MLB113214 and MLB113222

These teams are an attempt to try out what I think is a novel idea about how to use Coors to one's advantage.

Since the ballpark will generate a certain degree of offense for one's team, it seemed to me that one could sacrifice up to a point on offense and try to keep the other team from getting hits. This came from my re-reading of a post from some time ago by boogerlips, whose presence here I miss a lot.

Anyway, the plan was to deal with the IP issue - you need more in Coors, by having the rotation be based on four tandems (8 SPs) with three RPs - so 11 pitchers in all (plus the two AAA). I looked for the lowest OAV+ for pitchers with 140 to 220 IP, and low HR/9+, not worrying about IP/G much, since I needed these guys to go 5 IP, 6 at the most, and not worrying much about walks or WHIP, just OAV, since a walk in Coors is less dangerous than a hit. All 11 pitchers are set as available for relief.

For batters, I went with high 1B/100 with a few that had higher OBP or HR/100, for a little offense, and where I could I preferred the player with high range factor ratings and good fielding ratings over those without. That was for the first team, the Denver Streetcars (my sister was good friends with and edited the autobiography of the fine state legislator that was responsible for bringing the streetcar back to downtown Denver, so it is in her and his honor).

For the second team, the Denver Grasshoppers, I went for the best defense, range especially, that I could afford and sacrificed ,offense where necessary, trying to see if a team constructed purely to prevent the other team from hitting could win in Coors.

The results so far are mixed and we have very low sample sizes.

After 25 games the Streetcars are 14-11, though they have played only 9 home games. In those 9 games, the other team scored a total of 50 runs. But 27 of those runs came in three games against the Wentley Brewers, whom this approach did not work against - they scored 8, 8 and 11 runs in sweeping three from us at home. But those 11 runs are the only the double-digit scoring so far by an opponent in Coors (or any other park) against us. So 5.55 runs per game by opponents over 9 games, but less than 4 runs a game by opponents in Coors against all non-Wentley Brewers teams.

The Grasshoppers are 8-8 overall and have played 10 home games, giving up 57 runs to opponents, at 5.7 runs per game.

These are not earth-shaking results, and I don't have much to compare them by but have the impression that 5.5-5.7 runs a game by opposing teams in Coors makes games winnable for my team more often than not if we can generate an average offense.

More results to follow as the seasons progress.

keep us posted. I'm always interested in learning more about Coors/Mile High. Despite all the games I've played, I've NEVER used either field by choice (which is to say I may have been forced to use one of those parks by theme restrictions, but in all honesty, can't recall ever having done so.). BTW, neat tribute on the Streetcar thing...

MLB112644 had two pretty amazing Coors teams. One (Rocky Mountain High) won a league-best 105 games and the WS, the other (For Science) won 91 games and made the playoffs despite spending almost all it's money on offense.

Personally, I think Mile High can be used more advantageously than Coors in most leagues because of it's focus on triples, but both can definitely be used effectively.

25 games is a pretty small sample... Please keep us posted :).

I think I can safely report that at least in these first two versions, the experiment is a brilliant failure.

1.The Denver Streetcars - this team was built on low, low OAV for pitchers, using four tandems (8 pitchers) as the SPs, three RPs and everyone available for relief, good defense but allowing some power hitting combined with good 1B/100 stats for my hitters.

The team is now 26-44, with the third worst record in the league. Our team ERA is only third worst, which I guess could be worse for a Coors team, but obviously the goal was to get team ERA close to the league average and still take advantage of Coors' bump for my offense to win games. This hasn't happened.
However, it is worth noting that the team OAV is the league average, which is an accomplishment and means that the low team OAV strategy might work better in some other version. What is killing us is that since I went with the hypothesis that one could ignore walks as less damaging than hits in Coors, we give up a lot of walks and are worst in the league in preventing home runs. So we are awful basically.

The great hitting on the team is being done by Matty Alou 1966 hitting .416, and Willie McCovey is having a productive year, though for those used to earth-shaking record breakers in Coors, it will not awe-inspiring. The idea was that an average offense playing in Coors could win with superior low OAV pitching with a slew of IP available. But it has not worked.

League number: MLB113214


2. Denver Grasshoppers - this was the team where I put every dollar basically in run prevention at Coors - spending on defense instead of hitting and again with low OAV pitching. Figured Coors would allow at least an average offense and the pitching and defense would do the rest, and again with the four tandems approach to insure enough extra IP and enough available pitchers. Didn't work either.

The team is 23-38, again third worst overall record.

This failure may have more positive insights at least for someone else to build on: team ERA is 4.84, only fifth worst in the league, which again since we play in Coors is something, but still worse than I hoped for.

But we are 11th overall in allowing hits out of 24 teams, and again for a Coors team that is pretty good. But again OBP by our opponents puts us at third worst in the league, so I have learned that you can't substitute walks for hits in Coors and think you are safe. And again we are worst overall in allowing HRs. So walks and HRs are killing us.

And offensively we are 15th in batting which of course given our home park is not good. We are 17th in runs scored. So sacrificing offense and trying to win with pitching and defense in Coors has not worked, though it has been fun to try and for a time seemed to produce low-scoring, normal games and I thought we might have enough to keep ourselves in the games often enough.

Live and learn. Science has advanced, though not my overall W-L record at WIS !

league number for this team: MLB113222


On the other hand, I have two Fenway Park experiments going, nowhere near as radical - speed teams and doubles hitters with low WHIP pitching and more spent on pitching and defense. So far one is in first place and one in second with good records. More on those as they develop.