Broken Bat - Discussion Forum: Turf

Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date	Function

#41687	11/11/2016 6:12:57 am
MukilteoMike Joined: 08/09/2014 Posts: 3294 Inactive	Has anyone else ever researched the effects of groundballs at turf vs. grass ballparks? I think turf is an abomination, but since only one other team in the league has turf I decided to go with it to study it. Here's the process. Ignore games with the one other team that has turf. Compare groundballs for hits percentages at home/turf vs. away/grass. I understand it's not perfect because the lineups could vary. Still, it's as good as a test as I can think of. Here are the results for this season. Home/turf groundballs have produced hits 26.5% of the time. Away/grass groundballs have produced hits 30.1% of the time. What?! That's opposite of what the manual says should happen. I'm curious if anyone else has measured results of the field's playing surface.

#41713	11/11/2016 10:43:23 am
PrivateSnowflake Joined: 01/06/2015 Posts: 1166 Bloomington Thunder Legends	I have not measured as you have, but have gone to stadium extremes over the years to see what works for the type of ball we play. After playing on turf for many seasons, I switched to grass this year. Reason being, this is a very offensive league and even though I was scoring a ton of runs, my pitching was being bombed as well. While my guys GB rates are nearly the same as their career averages, BA and by extension, OBP has suffered dramatically, taking down the top scoring offense by a full run per. Defensively (infield), we're still terrific. Don't feel a difference there. While the grass has helped me keep opponents runs down, which is what I intended, I believe I also neutered the strength of my club, which was get on, get over, get in. If I was a power team in a league of gb teams, then yeah, grass would probably be the way to go to slow them down. If you make a living by base hits, then turf is the answer.