If you watched the game last night you heard lots and lots of fence talk from Keith and Gary. Like a lot. Like enough to make me thing someone is talking about it in Queens.
So that sets up this letter from Jeff.
Shannon,
The talk of adjusting the Citi Field fences has been constant enough since the ballpark’s opening that I have accepted it as inevitable. If the Mets must (and I don’t think they must) adjust the fences, please give us something aesthetically acceptable. By adding a row of seats to the left field stands, the entire left field fence would move in about 3 to 4 feet and the outfield wall would need to be lowered by about 1 foot.
I think this would produce a few more honest home runs, while still maintaining the feel of a pitchers park. It would also create one more row of promenade seats that can now see the fence. Knowing the cost of such an addition, I’d suspect it’s more likely we’ll just see a tacky orange stripe across the middle of the fence. Besides reviving a look not seen since the implosion of all the football/baseball cookie cutters, it would render fans on the entire left field side of the stadium incapable of determining a home run.
Thoughts?
-Jeff
I like the park the way it is. You know how I get. It might be a dumb design but it’s our dumb design so let’s leave it that way for 65 years until I invent the holodeck, buy the team from David Einhorn Junior and open the Mazzillidome back where Shea was. Don’t worry it will have squares on the outside.
Until that day, I suspect we’re going to see a dopey orange line halfway across the Great Wall of Flushing.
Unless you want a silly “inner fence” like Yankee Stadium II had. Yuck.
I’ve got no problem with whatever they do. I don’t care. it’s a non-issue. I’ve also got a billion ideas about what they could do. a line would be the worst one.
How about the Mets run the bases like every balls gonna stay in, and get more triples that end up hitting the top of the wall. And have Bay be more aggressive off that wall and fire shots to second to catch guys trotting when they shouldn’t. (have him work on it in BP)
Hey look, home field advantage.
It’s the TEAM stupid, not the fences!…So much for a homefieled advantage they are 25-31 this year with one winning homestand!
Don’t tailor a team to an extreme ballpark…limits talent selection, creates a boring team and you play half your games on the road.
Have a park that is neutral, with a team that uses speed, defense and power. Then you can win anywhere.
Move in the fences…Keith agrees.
the park is fairer than people make it out to be.
Keith’s word is not automatically right, in fact it’s often wrong.
How about we just fill a team with healthy players? If Wright and Davis and Santana were healthy this year, things would’ve been a LOT different.
“Keith’s word is not automatically right, in fact it’s often wrong.”
Well, since this question is very subjective, I think everyone has their own opinion…there probably is no right and wrong…we should all be able to discuss it freely. Not that Keith needs defending, but name some things he is wrong on…maybe I have to re-adjust my opinion of him.
I’m so sick of the fence issue that I want to move them back. You want to hit home runs at Citi Field? Hit the ball 600 feet or run around all the bases before the outfielder throws you out 🙂
The Mets don’t hit a lot of home runs; if you move the fences in, that’s not going to change much – they don’t have any true power hitters besides Ike Davis.
If the problem is that the Mets can’t hit home runs, that would be the proper strategy when it comes to the stadium. If you can’t go deep, you need to neutralize the other team’s ability to do so, thus reducing their advantange. That’s what the Cardinals did in the ’80s when they turned Busch II into a canyon.
Making Citi smaller might help the Mets go deep more often, but it’ll have the exact same effect for the opponents. Instead of the Mets getting out-homered 3-1, they’ll be getting out-homered 6-2. Then everybody will have to find yet another thing to unsuccessfully blame for the team’s woes besides the composition of the roster.
The orange line is stupid … it is stupid in front of the apple and would be stupid in left. The first thing i would do would be to get rid of the Mo Zone cut-out.
I’m all for the fences coming in. I’ve seen some real bombs not go out at Citi. If it annoys me, I can imagine it driving the players nuts.
and it could keep good hitters from coming here
Leave them the way they are. Other teams have no problem hitting bombs out of there. Get better hitters
Better hitters don’t want to play there
Which of course explains the stampede of All-Stars trying to sign with Chicago and Colorado.
It’s all bread and circuses. No playoff race to discuss? Let’s start a buzz about the fences.
As others have said, it’s not going to make a lick of difference. The visiting teams can win here, and they get “robbed” just as much as the Mets do on any given night. Philadelphia plays in a band box but it’s their pitching rotation of which everyone’s afraid.
Just for the love of all that is not stupid, don’t give us another horizontal stripe. Either add seats and trim the present wall, put up another wall and fill the gap in with some plants, or whatever other solution can be found.
i think that the fences should be like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1aTrKKEiz2A/Ski6hMeGdGI/AAAAAAAACFY/WR3ITTWzIOA/s1600-h/CitiField+wall+heights.jpg – the fences should be evened out and they should get rid of the mo zone
It is a NO BRAINER to change the dimensions and Alderson know’s it, he is a smart guy. It doesn’t mean you turn it into a band box, even though the Phillies and Yankees prove you can win in homer friendly parks. Shea’s dimensions were perfect, it was fair. The 415 feet dimension to right center is not fair. The MO ZONE is a joke and so is, as Howie Rose calls it, the great wall of flushing in left field. Cut that wall in half. And please don’t just paint an orange line down the center of it to save money, you need to actually do a little construction and fix it right. Change the dimensions of Citi to the dimensions that Shea had. If I were David Wright or any future free agent slugger I would not sign with the Mets if they keep the dimensions the same and make no changes. A park has to be fair to the hitters and the pitchers, not just the pitchers. I am asking Alderson and the Wilpons to please make some changes this offseason. It makes me sick when I look at the dimensions of this park. I don’t want to get too greedy but how bout they paint the wall blue also, just saying………
In order to keep Citi Field’s “quirkiness” which makes the place unique, rather than move the fences in you can move the diamond out. By doing that you still have the Mo Zone, and the Great Wall of Flushing and the Pepsi Porch but the dimensions are more reachable. Additionally you can help the pitchers by increasing the amount of foul territory available and it becomes less dangerous for the corner fielders (rf, lf, 3b, 1b) as they have more foul territory to run and slow down before crashing into the walls. You could not move the diamond out more than 8 feet because the minimum distance for any new park is 400′ in centerfield. It would also be much more cost effective to re-landscape the diamond than to construct new seats and a shorter wall.
That actually sounds like a great idea…I fear, though, that would screw up the sightlines, as I believe they engineer the seats to all have a certain angle to the field…but maybe it won’t change it that much. You also have to move the foul poles.
The foul poles wouldn’t be a problem but I didn’t think of the sightlines and they may.
You can’t move the diamond due to many factors.
But getting rid of the horrible Mo Zone should be priority #1.
They can’t just add a row of seats to LF, where would it go? They would literally need to knock down all of LF & rebuild.
But I think something needs to be done in LF, even if it is just painting a line. But to make it a little better than that Why not move the entire LF fence up until the apple about 3′ and also lower the fence to a normal height of about 8′. This way it looks a little better than just painting a line.
Also, a pet peeve of mine that I doubt many others notice is the orange line by the LF pole. Why does it go up & down? CHANGE THAT!
Why can’t the diamond be moved?