Royals Ding Dongs Home And Away

Chili Davis

The fantastic new batting splits function of the Baseball Reference Play Index continues to amuse. Here now is a look at how Royals players have fared when it comes to homering home and away from Royals/Kauffman Stadium. Ignoring the years spent at Municipal Stadium ('69-'72), I found the 40 players to hit at least 20 homers either at home or on the road during their time spent with the Royals. Those 40 players hit 45% of their dingers at home, 55% on the road. Here are the players with the biggest raw difference between home and away dongs (all of whom hit more on the road):

	Away	Home	diff
George Brett	181	136	-45
Steve Balboni	73	46	-27
Hal McRae	95	74	-21
Darrell Porter	41	20	-21
Wally Joyner	31	13	-18

Perhaps more interesting is a look at the extremes of percentage of homers home and away. Here are those that were much more likely to homer on the road on a rate basis:

	Away	Home	Home%
UL Washington	20	6	0.23
Wally Joyner	31	13	0.30
Darrell Porter	41	20	0.33
Eric Hosmer	22	11	0.33
Matt Stairs	25	14	0.36

Hosmer has twice as many road dongs compared to home in his young career. That is not a trend that carries over into his overall hitting however. He has a career wOBA of .321 at Kauffman compared to .313 on the road. Hos could be due for quite a few round-trippers at home this year.

Now here are the real freaks, the guys who somehow have hit more dongs at huge Kauffman Stadium than on the road. First on a counting basis:

	Away	Home	diff
Chili Davis	9	21	12
Dean Palmer	18	25	7
Mark Quinn	19	26	7
Billy Butler	49	54	5
Jermaine Dye	41	44	3
Alex Gordon	40	42	2

Second, on a rate basis, which actually follows the above list exactly:

	Away	Home	Home%
Chili Davis	9	21	0.70
Dean Palmer	18	25	0.58
Mark Quinn	19	26	0.58
Billy Butler	49	54	0.52
Jermaine Dye	41	44	0.52
Alex Gordon	40	42	0.51

I extended both of those lists to six players to include Alex. Interesting that both Billy and Alex have hit more at home than on the road, though I have no idea what it means, if anything.

Chili Davis played only one year in Kansas City as the 37 year old DH in 1997. In a career that featured 350 long balls, 1997 was the only single season he hit 30. Perhaps even stranger, an incredible 21 of those came at Kauffman, which is a tie for the most home dingers in a season by a Royals player:

Rk	Player	Year	HR
1	Chili Davis	1997	21
1	Dean Palmer	1998	21
3	Carlos Beltran	2002	19
4	Steve Balboni	1985	17
4	Mike Sweeney	2000	17

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/4/2013.