You're right, how could a starting pitcher with a 3.65 ERA last season, only in the top 10 or so of the NL, help this team? That's garbage.
Before we go too far with Woody's ERA, he also pitched in one of the best pitcher's parks in all of baseball. 2006: Home ERA/WHIP: 2.93, 1.09 Road ERA/WHIP: 4.29, 1.45 2005: Home ERA/WHIP: 3.72, 1.24 Road ERA/WHIP: 6.38, 1.64
While PETCO is a pitcher's park, it seems silly to attribute the splits solely to that based on the huge discrepancy. It is likely that some of that split is simply based on the comfort level of pitching at home and general home field advantage aside from the park dimensions, much like the many Astros pitchers with notably better performances at MMP even though it's clearly not a pitcher's park. Also, his limited time at MMP the last two seasons and the 2004 postseason has been very strong.
Certainly true, although none of the Astros had nearly the same of splits that Woody had. As for his previous MMP time, I'd attribute some of that to adrenaline from the uniqueness of pitching in front of family and friends. I'm not sure how that translates over the course of a full season if the novelty disappears. I would suspect that benefit would dramatically decrease, but then, that didn't really happen with Clemens.
