unfair stigma.

great american ballpark does not favor hitters. some of you maybe laughing right now, but this is an empirical fact. i am tired of the stigma that has been attached to our ballpark by baseball writers. nicknames have been coined (e.g. "great american smallpark") and the notion that the GABP is a hitter's paradise has worked its way into every broadcast from the park. but it is untrue and unfair.

my interest in this issue was sparked when the reds signed eric milton during the offseason. milton is notorious for giving up the long ball, and after the signing sports writers began to question why he would want to pitch in a home run launching pad. but they were wrong in their judgement of GABP--great american is actually a very fair park, if anything it favors pitchers. and my evidence for this claim comes from ESPN.

in 2001, ESPN created a formula that rates a ballpark's favorability to pitching or hitting. good pitching parks have a rating below 1.0 and good hitting parks have a rating above 1.0. in both 2003 and 2004 (the only years it has been ranked), great american ballpark rated a 0.992. so i ask that sports writers consider the facts and not just their intuitions when writing about the GABP. hopefully that will stop the proliferation of this myth--a myth that scares good pitchers from signing with cincinnati.