The WGOM

Eh, I'd forgotten that he had been pitching in Safeco. For some reason I still think of the Kingdome when I think of the Ms. Then again, I also think of the cool Trident-M hats instead of the goofy/ugly ones they wear now, too.

You inspired me to look at something else by bringing up Safeco, once my memory kicked back in and I realized the Ms actually didn't play in a tomb anymore. I went to Clem's and compared Safeco and PETCO and found they were much more alike than I'd given them credit for. I knew HOK was getting pretty formulaic with the exterior treatment, but with all the talk about how the new ballparks are "asymmetric" I hadn't given any thought to looking at outfield distances from park to park.

Here's the data for Safeco/PETCO:

LF: 331/334
LC: 388/367
CF: 405/396
RC: 385/387
RF: 326/322

Not quite a complete rip-off, but HOK definitely did crib quite a bit of the basic layout from Safeco, which they did not design.

Looking at the actual distances for the park in Philadelphia, I can see Moyer's going to struggle to do as well as I optimistically predicted. 329 feet to left field, 374 feet (estimated by Clem actually to be 360) to left-center. Considering the wall was moved back last year because of the number of home runs, Moyer might have some rough home outings ahead of him. It saddens me a bit - Moyer's "success" at his age has been a nice story to watch unfold. I'd hate to see the guy shelled in his home park, especially if that home park is in Philadelphia.

If I was in Pat Gillick's seat, I'd probably be seeing if San Diego would be interested in pairing Moyer and Maddux before the blood starts flowing.

There's something weird about the air on the West Coast, especially at night, too. The ball really just doesn't fly very well. I don't know what it is, but it's clearly there. If you look at the dimensions in Arlington comparted to the dimensions in Safeco, they're really pretty similar. Safeco's a little more asymmetric, so you'd expect it to be a little harder overall (there are more RHB than LHB in the league after all), but Safeco plays as a reasonably extreme pitcher's park and Arlington plays as an extreme hitter's park. Certainly some of that has to do with the air in Texas, but I think there could equally well be an effect from West Coast climates. Almost every single West Coast park has a reputation as a pitcher's park, except for Anaheim, I suppose. (And BrianS pointed out that wherever it is that the Giants play has been reasonably neutral the last couple of years, but it at least used to have a rep as a pitcher's park.)

Safeco Field is near the waterfront of Elliott Bay, so it has the marine air, and the prevailing winds during baseball season usually blow in from LF, which is one reason the park isn't as tough on lefty hitters. The ball can catch a draft and carry to RF, but often seems to hang up going to LF/CF. The field is also 10 feet below sea level, and some players have claimed that the grass there can get wetter than normal. And more thing about Seattle and the West Coast in general: the light is different. Players frequently complain about the glare and high sky in Seattle, which is why the M's have experimented with numerous hitter's backdrops, and I believe that can be a problem in other West Coast parks, as well.

Back when the Ballpark in Arlington opened, I recall hearing that the Rangers hitters complained when they first saw the dimensions. Then they took some BP and played a few games....

Yeah, Texas and Colorado are in bad spots w/r/t trying to keep their parks from being really extreme. If they move the fences in, HR go up. If they move the fences back, that's more room for singles, doubles, and triples to fall in. If they move the infield seats back to create more foul territory, then they lose seating near the field of play. There's no good solution to the dilemma.

The Rangers could try knocking down the offices beyond CF to open up the park and let the wind blow in. I think the old park in Arlington used to be considered a good pitcher's park, because it was so open to the wind. I doubt they'll ever do that, but I think it would be an effective way to make the place more friendly to pitchers.

I've wondered how differently Coors might play if they had just given slightly large dimensions to CF and either LF or RF, and then laid out normal dimensions for one side of the field with with a gigantic "Rock Monster" wall. That way, I'd think you'd see balls fly out to half or two-thirds of the yard just like they do anyway, but the outfielders wouldn't have an impossible expanse to cover, and the club could make the Rock Monster as prohibitively high as the it wanted to turn some HR's into doubles or long singles. In other words, what if Coors were shaped more like Fenway?

From what I understand, it's not all that obvious how changing the surroundings of the stadium actually affect the wind patterns inside the statement. I haven't studied this personally, but I recall reading things from the engineers who design these things that make it sound very difficult to predict these sorts of things. For whatever that's worth.

With Coors, that would certainly be an interesting idea to give a try, but the real obstacle there (that you don't get in Arlington) is pitchers not really being able to get balls to break the way they want them to break. The humidor is supposedly helping with that, but we only have one year of data so far, so I'm not sure that's a real effect.