Gil Meche, before his last start in Kansas City, was asked about his last start at Texas and here is his response:
"The reason I was stiff," Meche said, "is the mound (in Texas) was so flat. From the first pitch in warm-ups, I knew I was going to have to battle.
"With a flat mound, I don’t know if it’s the way my hips move or the way I stride out, but it affects something. That’s why I like steep mounds. I feel like I can generate more power instead of having my leg land too early and me having to generate power with my arm. That’s the only problem I had. That’s why I threw so many off-speed pitches."
This got me thinking about some work I did previously on individual park factors where I noted Rangers Ballpark in Arlington's official park factor was ~1.05, but it was predicted to be ~1.01. It has been stated that the stadium funnels the air to flow to center field was causing this discrepancy, but there seem to be another factor.
I decided to see if there was any truth to what Gil was talking about. For a initial look to see if there is anything to the accusation, I examined the average and maximum speeds of the opposing starting pitcher's four seem fastball that have pitched so far at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in 2009. I limited the comparison games to those that happened as close possible to the start at Arlington, in case there was an injury to the pitcher. Also, I wanted to take the Texas pitcher's out of the study because they will be used to the supposedly smaller mound (I will look at Texas's pitchers as I get the time to see how they actually compare). There have been 9 pitchers so far that meet this criteria and here are their numbers:
| Game before Texas | Game at Texas | Game after Texas | Start before Texas | Start after Texas | ||||||||
| Date | Team | Starting Pitcher | Average Speed | Max Speed | Average Speed | Max Speed | Average Speed | Max Speed | Difference in Average Speed | Difference in Max Speed | Difference in Average Speed | Difference in Max Speed |
| Mon, Apr 6 | Cleveland | Lee | -- | -- | 89.74 | 91.6 | 90.65 | 92.5 | -- | -- | 0.91 | 0.9 |
| Wed, Apr 8 | Cleveland | F Carmona | -- | -- | 92.01 | 94.1 | 91.35 | 93.9 | -- | -- | -0.66 | -0.2 |
| Thu, Apr 9 | Cleveland | C Pavano | -- | -- | 87.73 | 89 | 90.34 | 93.2 | -- | -- | 2.61 | 4.2 |
| Mon, Apr 13 | Baltimore | K Uehara | 87.83 | 89.4 | 85.78 | 87.8 | 87.88 | 89.4 | 2.05 | 1.6 | 2.1 | 1.6 |
| Tue, Apr 14 | Baltimore | A Simon | 92.97 | 95.3 | 89.93 | 91.8 | -- | -- | 3.04 | 3.5 | -- | -- |
| Wed, Apr 15 | Baltimore | M Hendrickson | 87.16 | 88.7 | 86.24 | 88.7 | 86.54 | 88.1 | 0.92 | 0 | 0.3 | -0.6 |
| Fri, Apr 17 | Kansas City | Meche | 91.32 | 94.6 | 89.79 | 92.4 | 91.96 | 94 | 1.53 | 2.2 | 2.17 | 1.6 |
| Sat, Apr 18 | Kansas City | Greinke | 92.93 | 95.6 | 92 | 94.7 | 94.17 | 97 | 0.93 | 0.9 | 2.17 | 2.3 |
| Sun, Apr 19 | Kansas City | Davies | 92.12 | 94.2 | 90.62 | 92.3 | 90.9 | 92.9 | 1.5 | 1.9 | 0.28 | 0.6 |
| Average Values = | 90.72 | 92.97 | 89.26 | 91.35 | 90.45 | 92.64 | 1.66 | 1.68 | 1.28 | 1.36 |
Just using this small sample size, it can be seen that there seem to be a little truth to ability of pitchers to throw their fastest stuff at Texas. Fausto Carmona is the only pitcher that has thrown faster in a start before or after going Texas compared to the start at Texas. In the other 14 cases the pitcher through slower in Texas by ~1.5 mph.
These numbers have peaked my interest enough that I will continue to update the preceding data as the season continues, expanding it to the Texas pitchers and look back at 2007 and 2008 data with pitch F/X to see if the smaller mound is linked to higher than expected scoring at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
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