Suddenly the question of how Smoltz has fared as a starter in Coors Field seems moot. But since somebody asked last week, I looked it up. Smoltz has only started four times in Coors Field, the last being a nice game on August 19, 1999 where he went six innings giving up just five hits and one homerun to Jeff Barry (who probably had the best game of his career that day) while striking out eight and walking none. Before that, you have to go back to April of 1997 to find Smoltz's previous start, and the box score shows why: 5.2 IP, fourteen hits, seven runs, a walk (an intentional pass to Vinny) and only four K's. This might not have been his worst game at Coors though because the September before Smoltz gave up twelve hits and nine runs in six innings of work. Ellis Burks hit his 37th homerun of the season off him and Smoltz walked two and struck out five in a sixteen to eight Rockies stomp.
His debut at Coors however, earlier that year (1996) on June 9, was sparkling. 8.1 IP, seven hits, three runs, two walks and 10 K's. He was on his way to the shutout before Eric young got on in the bottom of the ninth, stole second and third and scored on a Jon Vander Wal single. Trinidad Hubbard then hit a two run homerun and he received the hook.
So his totals as a starter look like this:
26 IP 38 H 3 HR 21 R 18 ER 5 BB 27 K
That translates to a 6.23 ERA for those who keep track of that. Anyway, like I said, for some reason looking at our own starter, that entire exercise suddenly seems pointless.
Thanks go to Retrosheet for the historical data.