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Who was our MOTO this year? Forget Smoak for the moment - the hitters we relied on most were Seager (75 PAs not in a MOTO slot), Montero (35 PAs outside the MOTO) and Saunders (not often a MOTO hitter, but one of the best performers on the team).
Seager: hit 210 OPS points lower at home than on the road
Montero: 175 OPS points worse at home
Saunders: 110 points worse at home
This move isn't for Ryan, or Ackley, or even Guti. We need to protect our plus performers and get their actual performance level out of them. With the RH Zunino as our best minor league hitter and RH Romero lighting it up, we HAVE right-handers who could improve this team...unless the park destroys them.
It destroyed Cammy's confidence here - how much better were his road #s originally, before his whole line started getting dragged down over the years? It crushed Beltre. It DEMOLISHED lesser righties/SH like Cirillo (.541 OPS) or Aurilia (.608) or Spiezio (.590), men who were fine even as they aged in other parks. Figgins (.603) might have fallen as a hitter anyway, but off the Safeco precipice he definitely tanked out. It can't all be the park, but now we'll be able to tell to what extent it's other things. We can't keep saying, "the park needs you to be mentally strong" - as Doc said, mammals have a Pavlovian response to stimuli, and the Safeco stimuli is painful.
Or has been. It shouldn't be any longer, or certainly not unfairly so. Our young hitters won't develop horrible habits to cope with the park (hopefully) and Felix won't have to keep being perfect in order to get wins. We may already have cost him the 300 win club, since he should have Verlander's win totals by now with their similar years and games pitched figures.
Funny that helping the offense might help keep Felix. If it gets us into playoff contention and gets him 18-20 wins, that'd be a start. And for me personally, not having dead-ball-era offense will be a boon - especially if the kids improve next year as their age arcs and talent level would suggest.
~G