Why are we so much better at home than on the road?

[Fear The Chorizo]

I don't think the excuse that they're a young team is valid when talking about their road struggles - aside from Yo and CV, who are both in the bullpen right now, their pitching staff is full of veterans who should be able to pitch well on a mound other than Miller Park's. A post earlier in this thread mentioned that Milwaukee's team ERA is a full run higher on the road than it is at home - road ERA is around 5.16, home ERA is around 4.16 as of the all star break.

 

Offensively, the Brewers have scored 22 fewer runs in their games on the road than at home - that can be magnified even more since many times they haven't even hit in their half of the 9th at Miller Park this year. Also, some of the Brewers' biggest offensive games have occurred on the road (Mets, Cubs, Reds, Twins in a loss), so in the games aside from the blowout wins, their average offensive output is probably hovering between 3 and 4 runs per game. Combine that with a team road era approaching five and a quarter, and that's the reason why the Brewers haven't won more road games.

 

One would think the Brewers would love to play on the road with the ability of the top of their order to put up crooked numbers to start the game off (especially since Braun's been up and Hart's been leading off) - problem is the pitching staff has a knack of giving those runs right back to the opposition lately.

 

If the strength of this team is supposed to be their depth in pitching, some of those guys need to start pitching better. If not, hopefully the manager/GM gives other arms an opportunity in the starting role.

 

--------------

[pg44]

Three Words:

 

Secret Stadium Sauce!

[rluzinski]

Assuming a league average home road split (on average a team wins 54% of their home games, the Brewers "should" have a road record of around 23-22, instead of their actual 19 - 26 road record. The reason? It could have something to do with:

 

* the relative strength of the opponents

 

* relative strength of the Brewer players (if Braun played more home games, for instance)

 

* the young players simply perform better at home

 

* the Brewers actually over performing at home, relative to their true abilities (maybe they are feeding off those great milwaukee fans!)

 

* luck

 

* other

 

*some combination of all of them.

 

I don't know that luck was the sole reason but I do know that you can't say luck couldn't be the sole reason. A team that should have won 23 out of their 45 games has a 13% chance of 19 or less wins due to pure chance, after all.

 

Do I think it's only due to luck? Probably not. I don't think the road record suggests some huge, systematic issue with the entire team, either. Look at it this way. Here's Coco's home/road split this year:

 

home: 0.41 ERA, 17 of 17 in save opps.

road: 7.11 ERA, 10 of 13 in save opps., 2 losses

 

We have no reason to believe that Coco should be expected to perform much poorer on the road than at home, so I consider the above split most likely a coincidence. If Coco hadn't gotten blown up twice on the road, the Brewers would have a 21-24 road record. Still below our expectations but not by much. We probably wouldn't be making a big deal out of it, at the very least.

 

Again, I'm not saying I know why the Brewers have done poorly on the road but the significance of it is being blown out of proportion, IMO. I don't think he should expect the Brewers to be as bad on the road, relative to their overall record, in the second half.

 

My question is: Why do people say that young teams have trouble on the road? Are there stats for this?

 

I've never seen any, although it would be interesting to see such a study.

[Brian the Automator]

[ True, but it only increases homers by 5%. ]

 

5% of a team home run total seems like a huge deal to me...

[adambr2]

I don't think there is really any way to even suggest that it is bad luck anymore. Maybe that's a small factor, but as much as the differential is after this month, (now +19 at home, -9 on the road, for a 28 differential). I won't even bother looking it up, because I know there isn't another team in baseball that can touch that kind of home vs. away differential.

 

We are just plain bad on the road. We're not playing daunting competition. We lost 3 of 4 from the Reds, 3 of 4 from the Pirates, and 2 of 3 from the Nationals in our latest ventures. This is getting to be too much, to the point where we shouldn't be favored to win a series on the road against ANY team. 12-24 road record in our last 36, a .333 winning percentage.

 

That's bad for a mediocre team. A contender just can't play like that on the road.

 

I don't know what it is. Maybe we are that much more comfortable at home. Maybe we get really nervous on the road. Maybe some of our players just can't handle the pressure of playing in front of 30,000 people that want you to lose. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's some luck, too.

 

But what I do now, is that it cannot, absolutely cannot continue if we are going to have a chance. It's not going to get easier on the road than the Reds, Nationals, and Pirates.

It's just going to get harder.

 

We said around the start of the season, that we could find a way into the playoffs if we could go around .500 on the road. We can still get in with a little bit worse than that, but not at this rate.

 

We've got two months to figure out how to improve our road play at least up to respectability. If we don't, it's going to cost us our first trip to the postseason in 25 years. It's as simple as that.

[logan82]

Quote:

---

Maybe some of our players just can't handle the pressure of playing in front of 30,000 people that want you to lose.

---

Maybe they just aren't as good playing in front of big crowds. somebody else brought up how we have a better record during the week than on Fridays and weekends. Those would be the days when there are the biggest crowds. All wild speculation on my part of course.

[Ennder]

The Yankees are 32-20 at home, 22-27 on the road.

The Blue Jays are 31-20 at home, 20-30 on the road.

The Indians are 35-18 at home, 24-25 on the road.

 

This really isnt' as abnormal as people seem to think it is. I couldn't tell you why but the team seems to win the close games at home and lose them on the road. Its not like we are just getting pounded all the time on the road, we are losing a lot of winnable games.

 

We have an .802 OPS at home, .751 OPS on the road.

We have an .676 OPS against at home, .781 OPS against on the road. There is a definite difference there.

 

Baseball in general has an .762 OPS at home, .736 OPS on the road

Those numbers are swapped for OPS against.

 

Looks like we are relatively close to normal on the batting splits but our pitching just falls apart on the road.

[adambr2]

I would definitely agree that the pitching has been the main culprit. I know sometimes it seems like our bats fall silently for indefinite periods of time, but we don't struggle to hit disproportionately on the road in comparison to home, as Ennder pointed out.

 

Right now, there's not a team in the NL that they believe they can beat in a series away from Miller Park.

 

Our last 4 road series' were against the Pirates, Nationals, Reds, and Cardinals, and we managed 1 win in each series.

 

That's just not going to instill much confidence. If they don't figure out how to at least be competiitive on the road, hold leads on the road, and win close games on the road, they're not going to the playoffs. That's all.

 

21-32 on the road isn't acceptable for a mediocre team. Some teams with better road records than us: Orioles, Royals, Nationals. There are 5 teams in BASEBALL with worse road records than us. That's old-Brewer'esque. And we want to be contenders?

 

It's not happening with this kind of play on the road. And I don't believe that the "young team" explanation is the answer, either. It hasn't been the young guys. The lineup production has been similar both at home and on the road, pretty preportionate to what the splits should be.

 

The rotation, on the other hand, doesn't have a single starter under 4.08 on the road, and that's Vargas, who has been the only regular starter not to be considerably worse on the road.

 

Cordero, our veteran closer, has obviously been the biggest culprit in awful road pitching.

[danzig6767]

Looks like we are relatively close to normal on the batting splits but our pitching just falls apart on the road.

 

Yep

 

I think it was Al earlier in the thread who tied the losing to us being built for MP and the homers,but we have only three more home runs at home than on the road.Outside of drawing more walks at home,the offense has been fairly close to performing simular to home/road.The pitching though has been much worse on the road.

 

Taking a quick peak,Capuano/Bush/Turnbow/Cordero all have much better home stats than road stats.Of those four,Capuano has struggled away from MP the last three years,Bush has been much better at home both years,and Turnbow has been worse on the road all three years.I'm obviously not them so i have no idea if they get rattled by crowds on the road,just like the MP mound,or what the reason is,but all three guys are pretty important to our success/failure.

[adambr2]

Sheets is another guy that has to be added, surprisingly. 2.64 home ERA vs 4.28 away ERA.

 

We're talking most of our starters and our best relievers that struggle significantly compared to their home numbers. Generally, most pitchers are going to have a little bit better numbers at home, but not to this signficance.

 

This awful run on the road isn't a youth problem, it's a pitching problem. I don't know what else we can do. We've stocked the rotation and bullpen with as much additional talent as we possibly can in the last year (Suppan, Linebrink, Villanueva, Cordero...Vargas is an excellent #5).

 

Short of bringing in an ace starter or elite closer, which isn't going to happen, there just isn't much we can do, other than hope they can stop choking away the close road games.

[Team Canada]

I was looking at the standings today, and was struck by the fact that yet again, we're awesome at home and getting killed on the road, even through this bad stretch.

 

Home: 40-25 - #1 in MLB

Road: 25-40 - #4 worst in MLB

 

 

This is happening multiple years now. What the heck is the problem and at what point will a Brewers team start winning road games? It's killing us.

[RyDogg66]

Young major league players who hit it HARD on the road. The Brewers need to have a curfew. I've heard other former major league players admit that this was the biggest reason road teams suffered. They are usually up all night chasing tail and just loitering around town. When you have a wife/family to go home to after a home game, you go home. When you get 25 young guys on the road together in their own hotel rooms with nobody to answer to, lots of money and a little fame sprinkled in there, you have the recipe for not a lot of sleep at night.