=== Griffey Safe at Home ===

.272 / .385 / .523 - Griffey's performance at Safeco, 2009

.283 / .363 / .537 - Evan Longoria's performance, 2009

.181 / .275 / .312 - Griffey's performance on the road, 2009

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Griffey has hit very well at Safeco but enemy pitchers have blown him up in their home parks.  Why's that?

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=== Hittin' em Here ? ===

It isn't really the home runs.  Hit tracker shows that Griff has hit 10 homers at home and 6 on the road, but scroll to the bottom of the chart and notice that he only has 4 cheap ("just enough") homers in all parks.  He has 1 cheap homer on the road, 3 at Safeco, and one of the 3 "cheap" homers was 396 feet.

When I saw the above home/road split I thought maybe his HR split was 13/3 or 14/2, but that's not the case.  Homers in and of themselves haven't been the explanation for his Longoria-vs-Cedeno splits.

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=== Batter's Eye ? ===

Perhaps Griffey sees the ball better at Safeco?   Not really:

27 walks, 29 strikeouts -- Griffey at Safeco, 2009

27 walks, 38 strikeouts -- Griffey on the road, 2009

That's a difference worth keeping track of, but AL hitters as a group have better EYES at home than on the road .... and 27/38 is a really good EYE anyway.

Nobody ever claims they see the ball well at Safeco.   At times in the past, hitters have complained they fear for their lives trying to see the ball during the day.

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=== EYE as leading indicator for AVG ===

I'll make you a little challenge.  Find me somebody else who has a 0.70 EYE ratio who is hitting .181 (Griffey's eye and AVG on the road this year, 200 AB's).

Never happen.   Take all ML hitters who run an 0.70 EYE ratio and, according to Shandler, their aggregate AVG's will be >.270.  Even the schmucks with EYEs lower than 0.25 -- more than 4 strikeouts per walk -- average .240.  

So how can you have a guy with an excellent major-league EYE but an AVG far worse than any Tacoma Rainier would run?

Which brings us to the question of simple luck... the BABIP splits are horrendous:

.273 - Griffey's BABIP at Safeco

.189 - Griffey's BABIP on the road

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Griffey's EYE, home and road, is 0.84.  You'll search far and wide to find another 0.84 EYE that is hitting for a measly .216 AVG.

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=== vs 2007 dept. ===

Click over to fangraphs.com and you'll see that Griffey's peripherals differ in no important respect from his 2002-08 stats, nor from his 2007 year in particular. 

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0.84 - EYE 2009

0.86 - EYE 2007

19% / 14% - Strikeouts / Walks 2009

19% / 14% - Strikeouts / Walks 2007

0.83 - Groundball ratio 2009

0.72 - Groundball ratio 2007

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In 2007, Griff hit .277 / .372 / .496, with 30 homers in 144 games as an outfielder, roughly a Russell Branyan performance.

The difference between 2009 and 2007 was in BABIP:

.225 - BABIP, Griffey, 2009

.291 - BABIP, Griffey, 2007

 

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