Braves Road Woes Are Temporary

Even after tonight's road win at Philadelphia, the Atlanta Braves have a dramatic split between their home and road win-loss records. At home, the Braves are 14-4, and on the road, they are 6-15. So, one might surmise, the easy way to gambling riches would be to play the Braves at home and fade them on the road. However (or as Steven A. Smith would say, HOW-EH-VAH!), if we look at the performance of the Braves' hitters in recent seasons, it appears that the poor road performances are unusual for these players. If we can assume, as we often can in baseball, that the performances will gravitate toward their historical averages, there should be marked improvement over the rest of the season, and therefore, opportunities to find lines we can exploit if the average bettor wagers based on the perceived incompetence of the Braves on the road and the books are forced to shade the line accordingly.

I reference the Braves hitters, because there is not enough information for me to conclude that the Braves' pitching is responsible for the home/road discrepancy. There are only three pitchers (Hudson, Glavine, Jurrjens) who have started more than 5 games this season, which gives us a small sample size from which we could draw any reliable conclusions. Additionally, all three of those pitchers are actually sporting better WHIP ratios on the road than at home, which certainly doesn't help explain the road problems. Smoltz (5 starts) has admittedly been much better at home, but will not return to the starting rotation once he recovers from his injury.

Here are the home/road OPS numbers for the eight Braves hitters with over 100 at-bats this season:

Player (2008 Home OPS/Road OPS)
K. Johnson (.900/.665)
Y. Escobar (.899/.745)
C. Jones (1.224/1.091)
M. Teixeira (.703/.886)
B. McCann (1.039/.859)
J. Francouer (.779/726)
M. Kotsay (.930/.713)
M. Diaz (.875/.396)

I wish I was computer-literate enough to make that into a pretty graph, but what those numbers show is that so far this season, every regular in the Braves lineup, except Teixeira, has performed better, most of them significantly better, at home. Now, let's compare those results with the OPS numbers for those same players over the last three seasons, 2005-07, combined:

Player (2005-2007 Home OPS/Road OPS)
K. Johnson (.755/.834)
Y. Escobar (.843/.831) - *2007 only, Escobar did not play in 2005 or 2006
C. Jones (.994/1.012)
M. Teixeira (.949/.915)
B. McCann (.843/.840)
J. Francouer (.831/.734)
M. Kotsay (.663/.751)
M. Diaz (.814/.861)

Looking at these numbers, you can see that of the eight regular Braves batters, only Jeff Francouer has been significantly better at home than on the road in recent years. Four of the remaining seven (Johnson, Jones, Kotsay, Diaz) have actually been better on the road than at home, and the other three (Escobar, Teixeira, McCann) have performed virtually the same regardless of location. So, any suggestion that the Braves are dramatically "better" at home than on the road does not seem to be supported by the recent batting history. Or, at least, their home field advantage and road disadvantage are not really as pronounced as they would appear to be so far this season (most teams are more successful at home to some extent). As such, it may be profitable to look for spots to play on the Braves where they are being underrated by the linesmakers on the road, or to play against them when they appear to be overrated at home.

Grover adds that he is also pro-Braves the rest of the way. He has pointed out to me that although they're only 20-19, they have outscored their opponents by 44 runs so far this season- more than one run per game. That sort of margin is up there with the Cubs and the D-Backs. Their "real" record is thus more like 25-14. So it's reasonable to expect them to play like a .600 team from here on out once their bullpen gets healty. Or at least healthier.