How Good is the Diamondbacks' Offense Away from Home?

Written by Amit Lal | 28 June 2011

There is no question that Chase Field is a park that favors hitters, and the Diamondbacks' hitters have clearly received a boost by playing half of their games there. But the perception has been that the team hits well at home, but struggles on the road. With 80 games of the season now complete, and exactly 40 games played at home and 40 on the road, let's take a look at the splits at this point of the season.

Let's start with the NL stats at home, through games of Monday, June 27th.  

The Diamondbacks' offense has scored 194 Runs in 40 Games, for an average of 4.85 Runs/Game. That ranks them 4th in the NL, although the team is 2nd in both HR and OPS.  The most surprising stat in this table is that the San Francisco Giants as a team have only hit 14 HR at home all season - for the Diamondbacks, Chris Young has 11 HR at home already this year, and Justin Upton has 10.  

On the road, the numbers are quite different for many teams.

The raw numbers for the Diamondbacks are way down - 25 fewer runs in the same number of games, .059 fewer points of SLG, and .089 lower in OPS. However, the team still ranks #6 in Runs Scored/Game in the NL, and is still #4 in HR and #4 in SLG.  The biggest turnaround is for the Milwaukee Brewers, who lead the league in scoring at Home with 5.35 R/G, and are last in Road scoring at 3.51 R/G. The Padres are almost the exact opposite - last in scoring at Home at 2.70 R/G, but fourth in Road scoring with 4.39 R/G. The Dodgers are similar, ranking 14th at Home but 2nd on the Road.

Finally, here are the overall NL offensive totals for each team:

The conclusion to draw is that the Diamondbacks' offense is actually above average, both at home and on the road. The Diamondbacks rank #3 in Runs/Game overall, and are #4 at Home and #6 on the Road. Yes, their Road stats are significantly lower than at Home, but the team is still scoring runs at an above-average rate on the Road.  Ranked by OPS+ (OPS, normalized by Average Park Factors, from Baseball-Reference.com), the Diamondbacks also rank #4, with an OPS+ of 101.