On Friday, Baseball America released their yearly minor league park factors update. If you’re a giant nerd like I am, it’s one of your favorite days of the long and cold offseason.

The article, put together by Matt Eddy, takes a look at all 120 ballparks and sorts them into the 11 leagues that make up affiliated ball to determine how pitcher-friendly or hitter-friendly they are compared to the other ballparks in their league.

The final product is a Park Factor where 100 is average and everything greater signifies a hitter-friendly ballpark and every point below 100 indicates a progressively more pitcher-friendly park. This is what we’ll get into today.

The other stat that gets included in this yearly update is a multiplier which is less important for a general understanding of minor league ballparks and their run-producing environment and instead important to me because they help produce my BASH metric each year. Thanks to these numbers, I’ll be posting BASH ratings for every player in the Cubs system from 2025. Not only that, but I’ve got a full-blown database releasing in the next several weeks as well.

As for the Park Factors…

Iowa Cubs – Principal Park

League: International League (20 teams)

Trend: Hitter-Friendly

Runs: 109 Park Factor ranks 4th for hitters

Home Runs: 117 Park Factor ranks 5th for hitters

BABIP: 104 Park Factor ranks 3rd for hitters

Favors: Right-handed hitters (109 wOBA Park Factor) over left-handed hitters (99 wOBA Park Factor)

Knoxville Smokies – Covenant Health Park

League: Southern League (8 teams)

Trend: Pitcher-Friendly

Runs: 89 Park Factor ranks 1st for pitchers

Home Runs: 69 Park Factor ranks 2nd for pitchers

BABIP: 95 Park Factor ranks 1st for pitchers

Favors: Left-handed hitters (101 wOBA Park Factor) over right-handed hitters (88 wOBA Park Factor)

South Bend Cubs – Four Winds Field

League: Midwest League (12 teams)

Trend: Pitcher-Friendly

Runs: 89 Park Factor ranks 2nd for pitchers

Home Runs: 88 Park Factor ranks 2nd for pitchers

BABIP: 96 Park Factor ranks 2nd for pitchers

Favors: Left-handed hitters (102 wOBA Park Factor) over right-handed hitters (94 wOBA Park Factor)

Myrtle Beach Pelicans – Pelicans Ballpark

League: Carolina League (12 teams)

Trend: Hitter-Friendly (???) this is a really good example of these Park Factors being compared to other ballparks in the same league. It is NOT easy to hit in Pelicans park, and I’m calling it hitter-friendly here, but you could argue it is fairly neutral

Runs: 109 Park Factor ranks 3rd for hitters

Home Runs: 68 Park Factor ranks 2nd for pitchers

BABIP: 102 Park Factor ranks 5th for hitters

Favors: Left-handed hitters (102 wOBA Park Factor) over right-handed hitters (99 wOBA Park Factor)

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So what does this mean, exactly?

First of all, I was incredibly interested to see what these numbers looked like for Knoxville. 2025 was the first year in their new park in Downtown Knoxville, after playing for years at Smokies Stadium in Kodak. The previous ballpark played extremely neutral nearly every year, and the stats produced by both hitters and pitchers could basically be taken at face value.

The new stadium, however, immediately earns its place as the most pitcher-friendly ballpark of any of the Cubs affiliates when compared to the other ballparks in their leagues. Pair that with the Southern League that produced a league-wide .660 OPS, the lowest in all of affiliated baseball, and Smokies hitters find themselves playing in a torture chamber rather than a baseball stadium.

Besides Double-A, Principal Park in Iowa found itself playing a bit more pitcher-friendly than past seasons, although it was still heaven for hitters. Myrtle Beach leaned more towards hitters than we’ve seen in past seasons. And South Bend held steady as a pitcher’s park.

As I mentioned before, this was the last piece of data I needed to clean up my BASH scores from a season ago. I’ll be crunching the numbers over the next few weeks so that you can properly evaluate the seasons of Cubs prospects, and maybe give a little more credit to the guys like Pedro Ramirez who spent the year in Knoxville.

Reminder to check out the full Park Factors write-up at Baseball America. It’s an incredible resource and they also provide some really great graphics over there.