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The Rockies used to consistently have insane home-road pitching splits – for example, 7.14 at home in 1999, but only 4.84 on the road.

But since the Rockies have been using the humidor in 2002, they have been having much much more reasonable home-road splits, in fact too reasonable! While they still usually fare slightly worse at home, the difference is too small given park effects.

Some opposing managers and team officials have suggested that the humidor does more than just level the playing field – that it actually slants it the other way a bit, and I think this may be true. Not that Coors Field still isn’t a hitters park, because all the other factors such as the huge outfield and less air resistance are still in play (hence the Rockies pitchers still do a bit worse at home), but that the humidor does more than cancel out the factor of the dry balls – it probably wets them down a little *too* much compared to other parks without humidors.

Another theory I have about Coors which I think sheds some light on some of the splits we see is that the difference between playing at Coors and elsewhere exacerbates the splits.

For example, I feel that pitching is all about consistency – to try to repeat the same arm motion and do everything the same to achieve the same results night after night. So here are the Rockies pitching game after game in the thinner air of Coors, so they figure out the exact place to aim and the perfect arm motion to get strikes at Coors Field. But then they go out on the road and throw the exact same slider to the exact same spot on the outside corner, but it breaks 3 inches more and gets called a ball. Hence the difference in strikeout and walk ratios.

Similarly, with hitters, they get used to fat, hanging pitches which don’t break much at all at Coors, and then suddenly they go out on the road and these balls are breaking like crazy and they are striking out more and walking less. I’m pretty sure this is how the hitters end up with more extreme home/road splits at Coors than their visiting opponents, too.

This is also explains why people underestimate Rockies hitters who go to other teams. Of course they are not going to replicate their Coors Field numbers, but a lot of people just assume you can multiply their road split by 2 and get their new, sea-level stat line. But of course their real stats are always better, because that road split had been suppressed by the difference between Coors and elsewhere and the Rockies hitters getting too used to Coors.

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I don’t really know how to make a chart in a comment box, but here goes (BA/OBP/SLG/OPS):

Opp’nts @ Coors Fld: .274/.329/.438/.767
Opp’nts NOT @ Coors: .259/.332/.407/.739
Difference between: .015/-.003/.031/.028

While there is still a visible difference, it’s much more slight than the splits for the Rockies.

If I had to guess, I’d say that visiting pitchers are probably not as used to performing at high altitude, and that’s partly what helps the Rockies lineup get some extra offense. I’d also say, that with an absolutely enormous outfield, Colorado’s extra singles are balls that drop in against weaker defenses, while on the other side of the ball, Colorado had such an amazing defense last year that they didn’t let those balls drop, thus helping out their pitchers even more. And perhaps opposing batters appreciated the occasional extra ball carrying further for them, but felt the altitude even more when trying to field those balls.

I hope that made sense.

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