I Bring Nothing to the Table

The Truth Behind Yankee Stadium? [WMQ]

Whoa, what? Two WMQ posts in one day? I couldn’t ignore this story by Rob Neyer about why the new Yankee Stadium gives up so many home runs.

Back from reading it yet? Those Yankees are a sneaky bunch of sneaks (what? I used up all my good writing in the last post) shortening the walls like that and pretending like everything was ok! It’s like Rob said, don’t they realize that the Internet Age means that any secret you think you have will eventually come out?

Of course, they also pretty rightly realize that there will be no fan ire resulting from this. It will not be a scandal and they won’t have to do anything about it. Either they decide that there are too many homers in the park and they fix the walls or they don’t. It’s part of baseball’s charm that the stadiums all play differently and have different advantages and disadvantages, so I doubt this will turn into anything big. It’s nice to finally understand why and not have it be the result of the ambiguous and silly sounding excuse, “The wind did it.”

Posted

in

by

Dan

Tags:

, , ,

Comments

2 responses to “The Truth Behind Yankee Stadium? [WMQ]”

  1. Eric Mesa Avatar
    Eric Mesa

    See, this seems to me to be a pretty dumb thing to do. The other team ALSO bats in your stadium. So if it’s easy for you to hit homers its easy for them too. Unless….(cynic Eric comes out) … unless it’s not about the game and trying to win. Rather, it’s about getting fans in the stands. And fans like to see homers from both teams. At least it plays well into both teams’ markets on TV.

    Reply
  2. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    The key is to make sure your team is constructed to take advantage of your stadium’s features. If your park is easy to hit home runs in, make damn sure your lineup is composed of home run hitters and your pitching staff is composed of guys who don’t give up a lot of home runs.

    Downside, of course, is that pitchers might not want to go there. Why go pitch at a park that’s gonna balloon your ERA and ruin your record? The answer: They pay you a lot.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.