Cockcroft: Citi Field is costing the New York Mets—and their opponents—home runs in 2009

It’s a musgraveyard for flyballs!

According to Rybarczyk, the most significant change in ballpark effect by the Mets’ switching from Shea Stadium to Citi Field this season has been in terms of home-run production. In the first 37 games of Citi Field’s existence, the Mets and their opponents have been “robbed” of a combined 36 home runs that might have cleared the fences at Shea. Compare that to only two home runs—both hit by fellow fantasy first-rounder Chase Utley of the Phillies—hit at the Mets’ new home that would not have been round-trippers at Shea, and you’re talking a staggering difference in ballpark factors.

So what’s causing such a dramatic effect? Rybarczyk illustrates the vast difference in outfield dimensions between Shea and Citi Field in the diagram to the right. But it’s more than that. As he adds: “Keep in mind that the fences at Citi Field are considerably taller than those at Shea Stadium, and that for a typical home run ball, each additional foot of fence height is equivalent to moving the same height fence back by 0.84 feet. So, the 16-foot fence in left field at Citi Field is not only much deeper than the left-field fence at Shea Stadium, it is 8 feet taller, which equates to about another 6 feet of distance.”