Runs in April at Petco Park at a shortage for the Padres

I saw this tweet from Craig Elsten the other day about the Padres poor run production in April during the Petco Park era.

The #Padres have sucked at scoring runs in April since moving to Petco. The key is to survive the month and win the low scoring games.

— Craig Elsten (@619sports) April 20, 2014

I wanted to see just how bad the run production was so I did some simple math and created some tables.  At first I wasn't quite sure if Elsten meant only at home games at Petco Park or all games in April since 2004, but once I started crunching numbers it was pretty obvious he meant home games at Petco Park.

First let's look at the Padres run total and average runs for all of their games.  They average 4.02 runs per game overall.

Overall Run Production

At home games the Padres average drops to 3.82

All-time Home Totals

Now to look at the monthly totals.  When you toss out March and October for their small sample size, you find April and July are practically tied in terms of average runs per game and not too far off the 3.82 average.

All-time Monthly Totals at Home

Prior to Petco Park April wasn't bad at all.  In Mission Valley, April was one of the better months for run production.  They scored 3.9 runs on the road in this period.

Monthly Totals from 1969 to 2003

In the Petco Park era, April is clearly the worst in terms of run production for the Padres when you toss out October and March for their small sample sizes. April produces .28 less than June.  They scored an average of 4.3 runs on the road since 2004.

Petco Park Monthly Totals

So in conclusion, Elsten was right.  The Padres do suck at scoring runs at Petco Park in April.

Petco Park Era April Winning %