Raising and Deepening The Fences At Oriole Park?

[Sessh]

I can see both sides of this, but I ultimately don't like the idea of trying to improve our pitching staff by making the park bigger. I'd rather have better pitching. When this team is competitive again, we're going to shred teams that come and play in our park. Our offense will out-benefit our opponents more time than not. "Our pitching sucks" is not a good reason to alter the ballpark any more than "our offense sucks" is a good reason to bring the walls in and lower them.

Also, as pointed out by someone else, we still don't know what ball we will be using. Until MLB stops changing the balls every year and even mid-season or for the postseason, it's hard to even get an idea about anything. How good are these offensive players and how much is the ball? How bad are these pitchers and how much is the ball? MLB is stupid for continuing to change the ball every damn year. They didn't even wait until the end of the year last year to change them again. This needs to stop. I don't care which ball they use even if it's last year's ball. Just pick one and stop changing it because it's NOT good for the game and it makes analytics less useful. The ball has to be constant to get accurate numbers on anything.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, atomic said:

The team has a lease end coming up.  I am sure if they signed a new lease they could get this done for free. 

I guess it's possible.  i don't know what leverage they have to get a multi-million dollar construction project comp'd.  I doubt they'd say they're moving to Austin if they don't get the fences moved back 15'.

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Norfolk is still a very pitcher friendly park.  In the super ball context 4.5 runs a game is pitcher friendly.  

Homers increased by 56.9% in the International League this year.   For the Tides, their hitters hit 41.7% more homers but their pitchers allowed 72.5% more homers.     Unfortunately I don’t have team home/road splits for the two years.     

[atomic]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

If I’m a pitcher, I’m mature enough to be just as happy winning a 6-5 game at OPACY as winning a 3-2 game at Tropicana.    Outpitch the other guy, regardless of where you’re pitching.    That’s the objective.     If anything, I’d think pitching in a bandbox should work to our pitchers’ advantage, since they’re used to it and the opposing pitchers aren’t.   

You will be pitching more pitches when you are in a hitters park..  The guys pitching for the Rays get big contracts. Look at Cobb. Look at Price.  Look at Ordozzi.   You can come to Camden Yards and pitch your shoulder off and then be cast away like Chris Tillman or you can develop in Tampa and get a huge contract with inflated stats. 

[wildbillhiccup]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Do you know what you call a high strike out, high ground ball pitcher?  An All Star or a Hall of Famer.  The Orioles haven't targeted those kind of pitchers because they almost always demand a huge premium in free agency or trades.  And developing them is not trivial.

I'm not saying it is, but it's a pitching philosophy that needs to permeate down through our minor league system. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, atomic said:

You will be pitching more pitches when you are in a hitters park..  The guys pitching for the Rays get big contracts. Look at Cobb. Look at Price.  Look at Ordozzi.   You can come to Camden Yards and pitch your shoulder off and then be cast away like Chris Tillman or you can develop in Tampa and get a huge contract with inflated stats. 

Someone needs to run a study of young pitchers, controlling for park.  Take those who pitched in extreme hitters parks, and those in extreme pitchers parks and see if there is a significant difference in context-adjusted value and career length.  Also... OPACY won't show up as an extreme hitters park because it's a poor park for singles, doubles, and triples, but excellent for hitting homers.

A difficult part might be separating out quality of team and quality of coaching/development from the pitcher.  It could be that there are groups of teams that happen to play in one kind of park or the other that are really good (or bad) at developing pitching completely independent of park.

[DrungoHazewood]

3 hours ago, wildbillhiccup said:

Is it the ballpark or our terrible pitching (over the last few years)? Also, for context....

 

MLB Park Factors - Through December 2, 2019
RK	PARK NAME	RUNS	HR	H	2B	3B	BB
1	Coors Field (Denver, Colorado)	1.394	1.266	1.300	1.314	2.148	1.093
2	Globe Life Park in Arlington (Arlington, Texas)	1.245	1.062	1.142	1.090	1.545	1.092
3	Comerica Park (Detroit, Michigan)	1.107	1.086	1.111	0.928	2.011	0.973
4	Nationals Park (Washington, D.C.)	1.101	1.267	1.097	1.169	0.957	1.016
5	Oriole Park at Camden Yards (Baltimore, Maryland)	1.088	1.262	1.063	1.157	0.931	0.930
6	Marlins Park (Miami, Florida)	1.087	0.828	1.018	1.022	2.000	1.057
7	Minute Maid Park (Houston, Texas)	1.083	1.195	1.024	0.866	0.815	0.969
8	Kauffman Stadium (Kansas City, Missouri)	1.074	0.741	1.086	1.205	1.345	0.937
9	Fenway Park (Boston, Massachusetts)	1.063	0.878	1.010	1.380	1.120	1.108
10	Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)	1.047	1.170	1.028	0.886	0.960	1.026
11	Great American Ball Park (Cincinnati, Ohio)	1.038	1.130	1.027	1.029	0.437	1.052
12	Rogers Centre (Toronto, Ontario)	1.031	1.317	0.993	0.918	0.913	0.988
13	Angel Stadium of Anaheim (Anaheim, California)	1.018	1.081	1.009	1.022	0.815	1.028
14	PNC Park (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)	1.004	0.906	0.997	1.281	1.000	1.161
15	SunTrust Park (Cumberland, GA)	1.003	1.018	0.998	1.137	0.926	0.995
16	Chase Field (Phoenix, Arizona)	0.977	0.888	0.998	1.003	1.654	0.959
17	Miller Park (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)	0.976	1.030	0.913	0.899	0.828	0.992
18	Target Field (Minneapolis, Minnesota)	0.975	0.870	1.007	1.151	1.091	1.092
19	Progressive Field (Cleveland, Ohio)	0.972	1.048	0.952	1.037	0.583	0.979
20	Guaranteed Rate Field (Chicago, Illinois)	0.966	1.238	0.926	0.809	0.349	1.078
21	T-Mobile Park (Seattle, Washington)	0.952	0.934	0.946	0.827	0.486	1.006
22	Wrigley Field (Chicago, Illinois)	0.931	0.871	0.969	0.938	1.429	0.988
23	Busch Stadium (St. Louis, Missouri)	0.917	0.831	0.943	0.871	0.955	0.934
24	Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles, California)	0.905	1.128	0.987	0.898	0.333	0.833
25	Tropicana Field (St. Petersburg, Florida)	0.895	0.904	0.935	0.975	1.200	0.955
26	Citi Field (New York, New York)	0.891	1.000	0.889	0.841	0.500	0.950
27	Oakland Coliseum (Oakland, California)	0.887	0.854	0.954	1.089	0.840	1.037
28	Petco Park (San Diego, California)	0.860	0.871	0.908	0.885	0.704	1.049
29	Yankee Stadium (New York, New York)	0.816	0.865	0.880	0.729	0.591	0.901
30	Oracle Park (San Francisco, California)	0.798	0.691	0.941	0.826	1.423	0.886

Glossary

Are these one year or multi-year?  And what timeframe.  If it's one year that explains a lot of the weird outliers (like Yankee being a very poor hitter's park and HR park).  If it's multi-year... well, a lot of it is very surprising.

[atomic]

9 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Are these one year or multi-year?  And what timeframe.  If it's one year that explains a lot of the weird outliers (like Yankee being a very poor hitter's park and HR park).  If it's multi-year... well, a lot of it is very surprising.

I don't find it surprising that the Mets, Ray's and A's home fields are extreme pitchers parks.  And that Camden Yards and Rockies' stadium are hitters parks. 

[DrungoHazewood]

4 minutes ago, atomic said:

I don't find it surprising that the Mets, Ray's and A's home fields are extreme pitchers parks.  And that Camden Yards and Rockies' stadium are hitters parks. 

Even in short samples sometimes the signal overcomes the noise.

[wildbillhiccup]

22 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Are these one year or multi-year?  And what timeframe.  If it's one year that explains a lot of the weird outliers (like Yankee being a very poor hitter's park and HR park).  If it's multi-year... well, a lot of it is very surprising.

Just 2019 I think. 

[spiritof66]

For me, deeper or higher fences, leading to fewer HRs and, probably, more XBHs, would make watching games more enjoyable. I don't see how moving towards a neutral (in terms of HRs and run production) could be counted on to help the team, though. It makes more sense to build a team that suits the park than to fiddle around with the fences to try to improve the team's performance. 

I say that notwithstanding Charlie Finley's failure with a bring-in-the-RF-fence and then add lefty sluggers strategy in Kansas City, which led to the JIm Gentile-for-Norm Sieburn trade with the Orioles.    

https://tht.fangraphs.com/the-pennant-porch-pie-in-the-face/

[TommyPickles]

On 12/3/2019 at 8:38 AM, Frobby said:

I do not think playing in Camden Yards disadvantages the team as a whole, though it obviously disadvantages the pitchers.    Here are some O’s home run figures over the last decade:

Homers hit at home: 1,135

Homers allowed at home: 1,105

Homers hit on the road: 929

Homers allowed on the road: 956

So, while its obviously easier to hit homers at OPACY than the average ballpark, we’ve outhomered opponents by 30 at home, while being outhomered on the road by 27.     So it seems to me the dimensions at OPACY have worked to the team’s advantage.    

Do you think we’ve prioritized signing players who can hit home runs over the past ten years, because of the dimensions of OPACY? Is that part of the rationale for signing players like Davis and Trumbo?

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, TommyPickles said:

Do you think we’ve prioritized signing players who can hit home runs over the past ten years, because of the dimensions of OPACY? Is that part of the rationale for signing players like Davis and Trumbo?

Could be.