Much is made in baseball statistics about ballpark biases and how players play at home or on the road. Because of that I thought I’d take a look at next seasons schedule and put together a rotation based on home vs away statistics. This obviously ignores many other factors that go into setting a teams rotation but is fun regardless.

We’ll look at next season’s schedule for each rotation slot as well as a look at last years home vs road splits for Tigers starters.

To start off we’ll take a look at the number of times each rotation slot will start at home and on the road. Below is a table showing those numbers:

The rotation slots are fairly balanced with the first slot having the largest difference slanted towards away starts and the fourth slot slanted heavily towards home starts. Only two of the slots have more away games than home games.

Now we’ll look at the Tigers key starting pitchers splits of home vs away statistics from 2006:

Zach Miner was the most inconsistent but we will ignore him in this as he will not be in the rotation to start off next year. Outside of Miner it is pretty split even between pitchers who have a better home record and pitchers who have a better road record. Maroth’s numbers are a little off as well since he pitched some innings in relief last year and they didn’t go well.

So lets put the players into appropriate slots:

1. Jeremy Bonderman
2. Justin Verlander
3. Mike Maroth
4. Kenny Rogers
5. Nate Robertson

All other factors aside, this lineup doesn’t look bad to me!