Truck posted on April 15, 2019 13:56
Settling the Age-Old Debate
by 'Stache
I was bored at work and was messing around on the site and found the Split Stats screen. I was looking at how everything was broken down and thought to myself “If Hopkins has the better teams, the ERA of pitchers should be lower when they travel to Eagan.” So, I decided to look at all the pitchers who I knew stayed in one city their whole career. What I found was surprising. Most pitchers had a higher ERA when traveling to the other city. With this information I started to question myself whether Hopkins has better teams. Are the ERAs higher because they aren’t pitching from the comfort of Hopkins? Does the wind blow out more in Eagan? I dove down and started looking into stats and games.
I started off by looking at the head to head match up between the two cities. I noticed that some years didn’t have all the games recorded. In total I think there were around 40 games not recorded through the 14 years.
Hopkins is up 119 games in the overall match up. Even if Eagan won all 40 games that were lost that would put them at 79 games down. Nothing too outrageous considering roughly 100 games are played in a year intercity. But in reality, those 40 games were not all won by Eagan. The winning city on average wins by 14 games per year. Only two years have been the big reason why Hopkins has such a commanding lead, 2011 and 2018. Eagan just needs to dominate the intercity games next year to make it close again. Looking at the head to head I started looking at the year to year winnings. Eagan won three of the first five years with one tie between the cities.
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Eagan
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Hopkins
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2005
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53
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47
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2006
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59 (112)
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67 (114)
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2007
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62 (174)
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62 (176)
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2008
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65 (239)
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60 (236)
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2009
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57 (296)
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46 (282)
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2010
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49 (345)
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59 (341)
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2011
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33 (378)
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73 (414)
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2012
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44 (422)
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57 (471)
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2013
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45 (467)
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54 (525)
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2014
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28 (495)
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47 (572)
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2015
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65 (560)
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71 (643)
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2016
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44 (604)
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59 (702)
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2017
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55 (659)
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49 (751)
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2018
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38 (697)
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65 (816)
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(running total for each year)
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*equals year winning
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After 2009, Hopkins won 7 straight years of the intercity games. 2011 was the first year one city won in a blowout (Hopkins: 73, Eagan: 33). Eagan finally got back on the board in 2017 to end the drought. The overall years won are: Hopkins 9, Eagan: 4. This is a little more lopsided and how I thought the stats would look. 2018 was another blowout year for Hopkins and looking at the future Hopkins could go on another long run.
I know you Eagan people are chomping at the bit for HRL Championships. Well...technically Eagan has more championships (Eagan 8, Hopkins 7). Seeing that the first year of the league (2004) was only in Eagan we can throw that year out of the window. So, the championships are now tied at 7 apiece. A nice trend to look at is that only four times has the HRL champion not been from the city that won the intercity match ups. 2012 Gothams, 2013 Gothams, 2016 Reds, 2017 Rays. With the years 2004 and 2007 thrown out because in 2004 there was no Hopkins teams and 2007 the games were split evenly, 9 out of 13 times the winning city was also the HRL Champion. This is a good indicator of which city will win the HRL Championship.
Year Champion
2004 Twins - Eagan
2005 Indians - Eagan
2006 Red Sox - Hopkins
2007 Reds - Eagan
2008 Reds - Eagan
2009 Reds - Eagan
2010 Red Sox - Hopkins
2011 Orioles - Hopkins
2012 Gothams - Eagan
2013 Gothams - Eagan
2014 Nationals - Hopkins
2015 Nationals - Hopkins
2016 Reds - Eagan
2017 Rays - Hopkins
2018 Rays – Hopkins
Given all the stats that we have looked at, I think the answer is pretty clear. Eagan might have luscious grass and be the Polo Grounds for Minnesota wiffleball but they can’t compete with the tough neighborhoods of Hopkins.