Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig may have enjoyed taking some swings in the new Yankee Stadium, where home runs are flying out at a near-record pace.
The US$1.5 billion ballpark in the Bronx has surrendered 47 homers through 13 games, four shy of the Major League Baseball record for a new stadium. The Yankees were to return home yesterday for the start of a four-game series against Minnesota.
While the new Yankee Stadium has balls soaring over the fence at a near-record pace after the teams first two homestands, statisticians, meteorologists and other experts say it’s too soon to draw conclusions.
“I don’t think you would judge a player on the basis of 13 games,” Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau, baseball’s statistician, said in a telephone interview. “Until all the teams come in, until you’ve gone through all the seasons of the year and the different atmospheric conditions, what you have is something that’s curious, but not conclusive.”
The old Yankee Stadium was known for its short right-field fence, a tempting target for Yankee sluggers such as Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, Roger Maris and Reggie Jackson. All were left-handed hitters, with Mantle a switch-hitter.
While 36 homers were hit through the first 13 games at the previous Yankee stadium — known as the “House that Ruth Built” — there have already been 32 homers to right field alone in the new stadium.
The 47 homers in New York stand four behind the 51 hit at Puerto Rico’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium from 2001 through 2003, when Major League Baseball played 13 games there. Among current major-league parks, the record for homers through the first 13 games is 48 at Houston’s Minute Maid Park and Milwaukee’s Miller Park, statistics from Elias show.
Through Wednesday, the Yankees averaged 1.77 home runs per game at home and 1.3 home runs on the road.
While the dimensions are the same at the five designated spots on the outfield fences, a comparison of overhead pictures shows the wall now is four to five feet closer in the right-center field power alley.
That may mean the difference between an out and a home run in some instances, though it’s likely not the main reason for the increased homers, said Orel Hershiser, who won the 1988 Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the National League.
“The plausible thing is the bowl shape and the winds now have a chance to get under the ball,” said Hershiser, an ESPN analyst. “You get a cushion of air that the ball can carry on. The players haven’t really talked about how short the fences are. They’ve talked about how well the ball is carrying.”
Scott Rochette, an associate professor of earth sciences at the State University of New York’s College at Brockport, said wind can have much more of an effect on the flight of a baseball than heat or humidity.
“You might get a 10 to 20-foot difference because of temperatures, but the wind can change it by 100 feet,” Rochette said in a telephone interview.
Both stadiums are aligned in the same direction so prevailing winds are the same. The configuration of the new ballpark — with open concourses and more seats closer to the field — may change how the wind blows through it.
“With only [13] games, it’s really hard to say if it’s actually a big difference or if it’s just luck,” Rochette said. “It would definitely warrant further investigation on how the wind would be flowing around the stadium.”
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