Bob & Column & Ted & Malice.
But wait, here comes my favorite part:
The Mets don’t appear to be close to any significant up grades [sic] in their starting rotation, so if they want to improve their run-differential why not maximize their HR quotient by reconfiguring the ballpark?
Differential? Maximize? Quotient? Klapisch must be onto something smart here, right?
Oh, wait. He’s just using big words to shroud the dumbest f@#$ing thing I’ve ever read. Reconfiguring the ballpark around the same crappy pitchers will not alter the home run quotient. Reconfiguring the ballpark will only make those pitchers allow more home runs. Yes, the Mets will hit more home runs, too, but they’ll be yielding more at the same time, since they’ll be playing in the same ballpark as the other team, no matter how it’s configured. Unless Klapisch has some plan in mind for a radical newfangled wall that changes heights between the tops and bottoms of innings, the home run quotient will stay exactly the same.
And then, the kicker:
According to ESPN.com’s park factors that were released Tuesday, Citi was the major leagues’ seventh-easiest place to hit a triple in 2009.
Holy crap, sir. You found your way to ESPN.com’s park factors? While you were there, did you miss the part that showed Citi Field played as a slightly homer-friendly field in 2009? Or, worse, did you see it and think, “meh, it doesn’t really aid my point about how the Mets should move the fences in so they can hit more home runs like the Yankees and Phillies, so I’ll pretend I didn’t see it and cherry-pick this tidbit about the triples”?
I’m done here. There’s more fodder for comedy, but I’m bored with it.
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1. cercopithecus aethiops Posted: January 07, 2010 at 03:26 PM (#3430620)You know, he just might be on to something here. We have retractable roofs, so the technology for retractable walls should be a piece of cake. And there's even a precedent of sorts -- they used to change the batting eye every half inning at the old Yankee Stadium.
Bill Veeck claims in his autobiography to have had just such a wall at his park in Milwaukee.
How did they do that?
A retractable dark screen that the white-shirted bleacher bums could see through.
And even if you don't think they should move the fences "in," pe se, that doesn't preclude the possibility of tweaking the dimensions -- you could move the fence in in right-center, which is a true death valley, but also make a compensating change elsewhere, if you wanted to leave the park's overall impact but change something about the way it plays. Maybe the Mets think they have a big advantage right now because Carlos Beltran is more able to patrol that huge CF than opposing defenders (that kind of went out the window much of last year, but it's not a bad idea).
But to me, it's a lot more complex -- and potentially interesting -- discussion than Klapisch being stupid and Berg pointing that out.
If you have a young rangy catcher you can make the area behind home plate vast and for the most part it isn't like the other teams in the league are going to dump their old catchers just so they can get to a few more foul popups at your stadium. If you have a low contact high strikeout set of pitchers you can make the foul territory small to give a greater benefit to your hitters than to the opposing team's hitters. If you have a short porch you can bulk up on LH pitchers or RH pitchers and hitters as well. SO on and so on.
Okay. Twist my arm. I'll send you Derek Lowe for David Wright.
I didn't say "shrink the field," though that is one option. You could retain the overall size, but change the lay-out if you wanted to. I happen to think that is a good idea, because I'm not a particular fan of just rewarding dead pull hitters, but I'm not wedded to it. As I noted, you can make a good case that a large CF actually gives the Mets (at least as long as Beltran is around and healthy) a defensive advantage over most opponents. My point was really just that we can have a more detailed conversation about a ballpark, and how it can be tailored to the home team's personnel (offense and defense), in a way neither Klapisch or Berg seemed interested in.
As for Wright, the best thing he can do is just go back to what he was doing prior to 2009. If it means he hits 55 doubles and 17 homers instead of 40 doubles and 30 homers, so be it. They aren't changing the park, so he should just be himself. His first attempt to adjust to Citi Field by changing his stroke was a bad idea, and the rumors that he's now going to try and be more of a pull hitter in v.2 make me even more nervous.
Amen.
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