Friday, November 04, 2005

Brian Giles is cursed in Safeco

I swear I never noticed this before, but Brian Giles, a possible Mariners FA acquisition, hasn't exactly had the best luck when hitting in Safeco Field...

His 2002-2005 stats hitting in Safeco: (gotten from 2005 here and 2002-2004 here, off ESPN. If someone knows a place I can get his career stadium splits, that'd be great, though I don't think the Pirates ever played at Safeco, at least not with Giles on the team, so it'd all be SD-and-later stuff. Anyway:

31 AB, 4 H, 2 2B, 0 3B, 0 HR, 6 BB, 8 K... for a wallopping .129/.270/.193 line. That's a .463 OPS. For a guy usually posting an OPS above 1.000 on the road.

That's a little scary.

I mean, I lived in Pittsburgh for most of his glory years there, and I think the guy's great (though I always liked Jason Kendall better, and now I like Jason Bay better), but doesn't this frighten anyone, small sample size or not? By all accounts, he's the sort of batter that should actually do well in Safeco Field. I guess it could be just due to the interleague pitching familiarity and all, but it's not like we've had the best pitching, either :)

I hope it's completely irrelevant, but it was jarring to see those numbers. Maybe it was just a few unlucky games...

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