Wall Ball: Swinging For The Moving Fences

The recently altered left field of Camden Yards meets October baseball

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The ball was well struck, barreled up with true backspin propelling it into deep right-center field. The outfielders turned their backs to home plate in pursuit. The batter, a catcher with two-way abilities that earned him an All-Star selection in 2003, ran hard out of the box. He had played in Petco Park long enough. He knew never to trust even the most solid contact.

“There’s something wrong with the ballpark when Ramon hits one to gap and gets a stand-up triple,” said Brian Giles, the Padres everyday right fielder for the team’s first five seasons at Petco Park.

What was wrong, exactly, is that the original ballpark dimensions of the Padres home stadium were so expansive that a very slow-footed catcher could hit a ball so far, within the field of play, that he would arrive safely at third base, standing, before defenders could retrieve his knock and return it to the infield.

After the 2005 season, the wall in right-center was brought in 11 feet. The dimensions at Petco Park have since been further reduced, the park undergoing a more significant alteration both cosmetically and spatially prior to the 2013 campaign.

Sandy Alderson, who began his baseball career with the Oakland A’s in the early 1980s, was the CEO of the Padres when the initial changes were made. He’s no stranger to ballpark reconstruction. “I’ve gone through this process every place I’ve been,” he told me earlier this season. There were changes in the outfield at the Oakland Coliseum brought on by the Raiders’ return from Los Angeles in 1995. Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, also underwent significant remodeling during Alderson’s tenure.

“Anytime a ballpark is built, the ownership and contractors take a stab at what the outfield dimensions should be. Part of it is scientifically based on weather, climate, and studies; part of it is strategic in the sense of what a particular club may be looking for as far as the balance between pitching and hitting,” Alderson said. “But you never quite get it right. Like everything, you try and then see whether adjustments need to be made.”

Alderson, who left the Commissioner’s Office to join the Padres during the 2005 season, was not part of the organization when the original Petco plans were drawn up. The marine layer and wind patterns contributed to what I imagine were unexpected and unpredictable challenges.

“It was like the Grand Canyon when we first moved in there,” Giles said. “Streamers looked like they were blowing out, but the wind was blowing in. You could feel it in right field. It was blowing into your back.”

Consider the right fielder’s first-hand accounts in conjunction with Alderson’s strategic overview on ballpark construction: “One of the things to keep in mind, too, is when you have an original design, you build a ballpark and, almost always, you only have one way to adjust and that’s inward.” Indeed, expanding the existing field of play means negotiating with cement, retaining walls, and existing seating.

“There’s a tendency to build large and see what happens,” said Alderson.

In San Diego, as Giles put it, “People got tired of 4- and 5-starters going out there and dueling in 2-1 games. It was boring.”

With many ballparks in recent years becoming smaller, there’s one notable exception. Prior to the 2022 season, the left field wall at Camden Yards was pushed back more than 26 feet and raised over six feet. It was a dramatic step — both spatially and aesthetically — in a well-calculated effort to make a hitter’s park play more neutral. Estimates by MLB.com concluded the new dimensions would take away about 50 home runs annually. Indeed, in the past two seasons, Camden Yards has played as a slight pitcher’s park, according to Statcast data.

To the credit of the Orioles baseball leadership, including both front office executives and uniformed personnel, O’s hitters have reacted to most deep fly outs to left field with a smile. Perhaps organizational buy-in is a result of the simple fact that the ballpark now plays fair. Winning helps as well.

There are social media accounts that leverage Statcast data to track the trajectories of batted balls and determine in which ballparks they would have been home runs. It was not uncommon this season to see home runs to left field listed as a long ball in 29 out of 30 parks. That 30th park, of course, was Camden Yards.

The ALDS begins today. The road to the American League pennant runs through Baltimore. Much has been made about the power of the Texas Rangers lineup, top to bottom. Using Statcast data, I looked at which members of the Rangers roster were most likely to be thwarted by the new left field.

Right-handed hitters, of course, are most likely to be impacted; the ballpark dimensions were altered on their pull side. (Anecdotally, no right-handed hitters for Texas homered during their three-game series in Baltimore this season in late May.) Statcast projections confirm potential challenges for Rangers righties: Leadoff batter Marcus Semien and cleanup man Adolis Garcia, both righties, saw significant decreases in their home run projections based on their batted ball data overlaid at Camden Yards.

Semien mashed 29 homers this season, but he would have been expected to hit only 18 if he played in Baltimore all season long. That 38% reduction in round-trippers was the most significant by far for Bruce Bochy’s club.

Garcia’s total would drop from 39 to 33.

Slugging left-hander and likely MVP runner-up Corey Seager, meanwhile, would barely be impacted by the dimensions in Baltimore. He’s projected to have lost only one of his 33 homers this season at Camden Yards.

The Orioles and Rangers will play at Camden Yards twice, maybe three times if the series goes the distance, during the ALDS. Short series beget small sample sizes. It will be fun to measure the impact of the new ballpark dimensions for the first time during postseason baseball. We’ve waited all season for October.

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