ESPN New York reports that an official has confirmed the fence changes at Citi.
The Great Wall of Flushing will have a new fence in front of it (remember Yankee Stadium II had the double fence in left after a few years if mimicking the original design) and RCF comes in 25 feet from 415 to 390.
Further proof…Sandy is one sharp guy. I know many readers here don’t agree with this…I think it is smart and he is doing it for the right reasons. A neutral park does not play with your hitter’s minds and will make it easier to attract free agent hitters. Collins made similar remarks.
From day one, the dimensions of this park bugged me.
sure, but we already have a top of the league offense. we don’t need to attract hitters, we need pitchers.
and the stadium was already fairly neutral for run scoring, just not home runs. *yawn*
besides, they’re also moving it in for the opponent. This has 0 affect on the Mets ability to win games.
The numbers show that at home, where the Mets should have an advantage, they were 7th in the NL with 328 runs…but on the road, they were 2nd with 390 runs. So in fact they were almost 20% better on the road. That is a very large differential…I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I’d bet that is one of the largest differentials in baseball for a team hitting better on the road. That doesn’t sound like a neutral park. Plus only 3 teams in baseball had a worse home record.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/stats/byteam?cat=Splits&cut_type=33&conference=NL&year=season_2011&sort=702