Clever Like a Hawk

I am watching the White Sox/A’s game and shortly after Jermaine Dye’s solo homer off Mark Buehrle, Hawk Harrelson went into this incredibly long speech about how Oakland’s ballpark is a “bandbox.” Seriously, he used the word bandbox a minimum of 20 times in about two minutes.

He also went on to say that the A’s could “afford to play in a bandbox like this because of their pitching” and that, “If they didn’t have good pitching, they’d have to do something … move the fences out … to change the bandbox.”

As anyone with any sort of knowledge of park factors will tell you, the Oakland Coliseum is about as far from a bandbox as you can get. Its park factors over the last five years: 93, 104, 96, 95, 99.

A “100” means the ballpark is neutral, anything under 100 means it favors pitching. And lest anyone think Harrelson was right because he was just talking about homers and not overall offense … last year the A’s and their opponents hit 159 homers at home and 157 homers on the road. So far this year they have 49 homers at home and 48 homers on the road.

That’s some bandbox, Hawk. “He gone!”