woo, the first snoty post directed toward me. I just got goosebumps :wink: :lol: Anyway, I just thought the part about DLee and AP's homerun production might be interesting in this debate. I think the whole park factor thing is overrated, for the most part. You looked at home runs, but a better overall indicator is that Lee has a 1.189 OPS at home and a 1.183 OPS on the road. Those are for all intents and purposes, identical. I also think the popular perception of Sammy Sosa was that he benefitted from Wrigley, though his overall and HR totals were just about dead even in his prime years. You already see that Aramis does not benefit much from Wrigley. And IIRC, several of the Marlins coaches said that Pro Player killed Derrek, and predicted 40+ HR from him outside of there. This makes sense since Lee's power is from alley to alley, and that is no man's land in Miami. In parks like that, only dead pull hitters will put up big numbers, and Derrek is not a dead pull hitter. The whole notion that Wrigley is a hitters paradise is really not accurate at all. It favors the hitters slightly, but not nearly as much as some think. The reason for this, IMO, is that it is a park of extremes. I say that because while eveyone knows about the days the wind is howling out and homers are easy to come by, more often the wind is blowing stright in, and in about a third of the games (rough estimation based on watching for 20 years), you may as well be trying to hit a ball out of the Grand Canyon. Some hitters have benefitted from the cozy alleys, but the 355 down the lines are no easy pokes. The bottom line is that while Wrigley will give you a lot of homers, it will take away a lot of them, also. Any players that do benefit are probably hitters with marginal power who plays there enough to mold his game to the field. Players who are great hitters with genuine power generally rise above the limitations or enhancements that a given field gives them Now there are players who benefit from their home parks greatly. Take Morgan Ensberg, for example. While Morgan oocasionally gets XBH to other fields, he is an extreme pull hitter. This is a huge advantage in MMP. Over the past three years, Ensberg's OPS has been nearly 300 points lower on the road. This year has been better, but there is still a 150+ point differential. His power numbers are also better than Pujols this year, but his you can attribute to park factors, unlike Lee. Here's another indicator. I looked at the number of parks played in this year, and how each player fared OPS-wise overall. Since a 1.000 OPS is the mark of excellence, so to speak, I wanted to see how many parks Lee, Pujols and Ensberg managed to reach that number in, and which ones. Pujols has played in 14 parks this year, and topped 1.000 in eight of them. He fared the best in Turner, Coors, Miller and Citizens Bank. Lee has played in 13 parks this year, and topped 1.000 in 10 of them. He has performed the best in Pro Player, Busch, Great American, Miller, BOB and Dodger Stadium. Ensberg has played in 13 parks this year, and topped 1.000 in 3 of them. He has fared well at MMP, Coors and Great American. Also, 17 of his 24 HR have been hit between those three hitters parks, and nowhere else has he hit more than 1. This is based on only this year, but the three year splits bear out around the same level of consistancy for Lee and Pujols. and inconsistancy for Ensberg. Statistically speaking Lee is actually the most consistant of the three, independent of park, though not the most productive. Ensberg I used to illustrate a player who has their stats inflated by ballpark. Lee does not fall into this category at all. In fact, if you rate his performance by park over the past three years, Wrigley sits right in the middle of the 23 parks he has played in over that time The same can be said of Pujols and Busch, right in the middle, 11th of 20. So from a relative performance standpoint, Pujols is no more consistant than Lee, and Lee is no more dependent on his home park than Albert. Awesome post, and I think the second half of it proves pretty well that DLee isn't park dependednt on power. I want to agree with the first half of your post (the one stating that Wrigley isn't a hitter's paradise), but I need to know why, despite your rational argument, Wrigley still gets a high HRPF?