Gonzalez Loves Mountains; Headley Hates Beaches

Well, actually I have no idea if Carlos Gonzalez loves the mountains or if Chase Headley hates the beach, but if my home/road splits looked like their’s, I would certainly start to appreciate/blame the topography.

Many have pointed out how dramatic a split young Carlos Gonzalez possess — at home in Colorado, he’s an elite swing sultan; away from where the beer flows like wins, he is a pedestrian, league-average bat-swinger. Yeah, we get it. Everyone knows, right?

Well, the split is perhaps more dramatic than initially anticipated. Looking at players in the last decade (from 2001 through 2011) with a minimum of 500 home and 500 away PAs, we see CarGo has hit a wRC+ 74 points higher at home than away — more than anyone else in the period:

In other words, no one compares to Carlos Gonzalez… Okay, well, actually one guy does.

And it makes a world of difference.

Before the CarGo Era, there was the Matt Holliday Era. Matt Holliday had a wRC+ 66 points higher in the Rockies during his tenure with Colorado. Then, he got traded to the St. Louis Cardinals and continued to mash like he never left Colorado.

What does this mean? Hellifiknow. But it certainly means that being a product of Coors Field doesn’t necessarily make a body a bad player. Perhaps it helped make a young Holliday look better than he really was, and then when he became an even better player, we just didn’t notice. Who knows?

In the meantime, San Diego Padres hitters must be just about sick of the west coast life. Chase Headley and a pair of other Padres have seen their wRC+ absolutely bottom out in PETCO Caverns Park.

Here’s the top 9 and bottom 9 (why 9? Because I’m feeling frisky) home/road split differences for 2001 through 2011 (min. 500 PAs both home and away):

Name	Team	PA	BB%	K%	HR%	wRC+	wRC+ Diff
Carlos Gonzalez	COL	1495	8%	21%	4.9%	138	74
Alfonso Soriano	TEX	1340	5%	18%	4.8%	107	71
Matt Holliday	COL	2968	8%	17%	4.3%	134	66
Luke Scott	BAL	1795	11%	20%	4.7%	115	62
Nelson Cruz	TEX	2077	8%	22%	5.1%	115	58
Scott Hatteberg	CIN	1017	13%	8%	2.3%	111	54
Ian Kinsler	TEX	3446	10%	12%	3.6%	119	54
Frank Thomas	CHW	1730	16%	18%	5.8%	137	52
Justin Upton	ARI	2402	10%	24%	3.8%	119	50
Felipe Lopez	WAS	1354	9%	16%	1.0%	78	-33
Dmitri Young	DET	1976	7%	19%	4.1%	115	-34
D’Angelo Jimenez	CIN	1102	12%	15%	1.7%	98	-35
Miguel Tejada	OAK	1418	6%	11%	4.3%	121	-35
Xavier Nady	PIT	1050	6%	18%	3.4%	116	-35
Adrian Gonzalez	SDP	3425	12%	18%	4.7%	135	-35
Omar Infante	DET	1732	6%	18%	1.8%	79	-36
Khalil Greene	SDP	2642	7%	20%	3.2%	93	-36
Chase Headley	SDP	2114	10%	22%	1.7%	108	-37