View Full Version : Citizens Bank Park-Did the Phillies know...
...it would produce so many HRs??
I think it's a great park & a fun place to watch a game but it's kind of a joke when it comes to how easy it is to hit a HR. Do you think the team knew all along that it would be a HR hitters' paradise & a pitchers' nightmare?
Engineers should be able to predict with some accuracy what could happen based on the dimensions & the winds & the layout of the park how the ball would carry. I doubt they would ever disagree publicly with the Phillies when they said they are looking to build a park that was fair to pitchers & hitters. At least I think they said that. The Phillies never said we're going to create a park where the ball would fly out on a regular basis.
Or do you think everyone got it wrong & it just happen to turn out to be a HR hitters' dream?
jalbright
07-07-2007, 05:06 AM
They may have wanted to have a few more homers than at the Vet, as they may well have been influenced by Sosa/McGwire's effect on the game. That said, I don't think they wanted a park that would allow so many--they've already made an alteration to the park to reduce the homer rate. Sometimes, things like that aren't as easy to predict as you'd like, and I think this is one of those times.
Jim Albright
It's a tough call. I think they wanted a field with similar dimensions as the Vet. But at some point, you would think the engineers would tell the Phillies that, unlike the Vet, with the outfield being open, there would be more HRs. I agree, sometimes you don't know what will happen but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Phillies knew what could happen & thought more HRs would bring in more fans. I partially feel this way because of the issue in the first year of the park when it was discovered that the distance to left field was incorrectly marked. The distance was actually from home plate to left-centerfield which meant the distance from home to left field was even shorter than advertised. When things like this happen, it really makes me wonder.
Mex4Prez
07-07-2007, 02:18 PM
The biggest problem is that there is no way to fix it. Beacuase the stands are so close to the foul lines they can't even move home plate backwards to make the field bigger. Maybe they can take out the first 5-10 rows in left but I'm sure that is a huge project if it's even do-able. MLB should have some kind of guideline when building new parks so that the fences could easily be moved in or out 15-20 feet. Some of these new parks are getting out of hand. I don't mind having quirks in fields, but I could probably hit a homerun in that park and I stink.
philliesfiend55
07-09-2007, 05:08 PM
Its probably more of the last option you listed than anything else "Everybody got it wrong (certainly not the only time that happened in Philadelphia Sports)
and now we've created a homerun hitters dream". (I'm paraphrasing).
But the flip side of having a home park that is a home run hitters dream is that you can't strengthen a team through free agent pitching if pitchers are afraid to sign with you , because its a pitchers nightmare, or at least a pretty tough park to pitch in and keep that ERA down.
When the park was under construction public comments by Phillies officials indicated that the park would be fair to both hitters and pitchers and might even lean slightly towards a pitcher's park. Obviously somebody miscalculated.
I hope the Phillies attack the pitching dilemma in the same manner as the Colorado Rockies. I was very impressed that most of the Rockies' pitchers get most of their outs via the ground ball.