Why Aren't Baseball Fields Standardized?

[SeaHawksHuddle]

Why are different fields different sizes? Why is there not a standard size? This seems absurd to me. It would be like the Seahawks having a 120 yard field with the 60 yard line being midfield.

Yet another reason why baseball is dumb.

 

[bobflipaburger]

You complain about baseball being boring and then you suggest watering down the designs of the parks? Couple reasons, firstly is because baseball is a game full of tradition, some parks were constructed unconventionally because of the location. Take Fenway Park in Boston for example, they didn't have room for a long left field fence so the put the green monster up. The other is uniqueness, teams build around their park. The Mariners, for example, play in a very pitcher friendly park. Pitcher friendly means big, so you need good defensive players in the outfield to cover all that ground. If you play in a park like Boston you can get away wwith putting Manny Ramirez in left for a long time, because there's not much room out there for his lack of range to really be a detriment. To your team. Also keep in mind that having a park with all the same dimensions won't lead to balance because the climate does have an affect on how the baseball travels. In Denver they keep baseballs in a humidor to try to counteract how well the ball carries in the thin air there. The ball travels better in warmer, less humid places than it does in Seattle. You can also look at Yankee Stadium for an example of what I'm saying. Old Yankee Stadium and New Yankee Stadium have the exact samme dimensions, but the ball in new Yankee stadium just flys out when you hit it to right field. There's a lot more cheap homers hit there than there was in old yankee stadium. That's due to a jetstream, I'm not sure what the cause of it is, but I assume its the design of the stadium around the field, because its not the field itself.

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

Standard field size and design of the overall park do not have to be linked. And regardless, I would not expect a standard field size to make the game more or less exciting - it will still be boring to me. My thought is more around how it basically invalidates any stat associated with baseball. The whole point of a statistic is to judge something on an equal ground. Having different sized fields makes that ground unequal.

 

[bobflipaburger]

That's why there's a large presence of advanced statistical analysis in baseball. Plus, like I said before, just because a park is the same size as another one doesn't mean they're equally balanced.

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

But it is much closer to being equally balanced and then you just have to worry about weather type phenomena, like any other sport that plays outside. And while there may be some sort of "advanced" statistical analysis (advanced in quotations because, let's face it, it isn't exactly calculus level), it is never communicated to ordinary people nor entered into record books. There is no adjustment for some hitter having 50 HRs in Arlington and some other guy hitting 45 HRs in Safeco.

Again, I liken this to football fields being different lengths. It's just ridiculous.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Not necesarily, again, New Yankee Stadium is right next to where Old Yankee Stadium was but the ball flies out of there, especially to right field. And OPS+ is an example of a stat that takes into account the ball park a player plays in. There are plenty of calcuus level baseball statistics, most people don't use them though. They're called Sabermetrics and there's kind of s stigma around them for some people (94 will be glad to give you that perspective lol) but there's a bit of a renaissance going on right now. Sabermetrics are starting to get used a little bit more in the mainstream.

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

But the average fan doesn't care about OPS+. Nor should they. If you take away more variables, there would less need to come up with things like OPS+.

And I looked up a bunch of Sabremetrics formulas and those are not calculus.

And I looked up the Yankee Stadium thing and the conclusion of a study was that the shape and height of the right field wall was to blame for the increase in home runs. Which directly supports my point of needing to standardize field dimensions.

 

[bobflipaburger]

There's no way to completely eliminate varibles, weather is a huge varible. Coors Field is a huge field and due to the thin air there's always a lot of homers hit there. In fact, Coors Field is roughly the same size as Safeco Maybe even a little bigger.

Not every sabermetric requires calculus to calculate, a lot of them don't. And some I don't even know how to calculate. But some do, figuring how much a pitch broke, or breaking down the trajectory of a home run requires calculus. Although I don't think formulas include calculus. Typically, you use calculus to develop the formulas and come up with something that can expressed in algebra.

Even if they wanted to go to standardized fields now, it would never happen. Too much money rquired to make every team remodel, determining dimensions would be somewhat arbitrary, and there's too much history in iconic parks like Wrigley and Fenway.

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

But you do what you can to eliminate the variables you can control. That's my point. And as teams have built new parks, to not make them standardized is stupid.

I think Sabremetrics uses a lot of algebra, trigonometry, and algebra-based physics. I still did not see any derivatives, limits, or functions. That's not to say that I don't appreciate what they have done.

How would standardizing a field be arbitrary? It is only arbitrary if the guidelines are too vague.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Field A:

Dimensions: Left field- 347, left-center field- 390, center field- 415, right-center field 375, right field 350

Average of 182.4 home runs hit here the last 5 seasons; reputation as one of the best hitter's parks in ther league. Also the home run numbers have gone up the past couple seasons, despite pitching really dominating the league over that stretch. That's not really relevant to this discussion, I just found it interesting.

Field B:

Dimensions: Left field- 331, left-center field- 390, center field- 405, right-center field- 385, right field- 326

Average of 136.2 home runs over the past 5 seasons, with a low mark of 104 in 2010; reputation as one of the most pitcher friendly ballparks in the league.

Also worth noting that the first stadium is a national league field, and the second one is an american league field. The national league is a much weaker offensive league than the AL even before you consider the fact that they don't get a DH.

Even as a slightly bigger park, in the weaker offensive league, field A still has averaged 46 home home runs per season. In 2010 there was 83 more home runs hit there than in field B.

I said it would be arbitrary because you can't make one set of dimensions to fit every ballpark.

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

Your dimensions don't mean anything to me. Same as the two Yankees stadiums. Identical measurements at certain points, but that does not tell me what the fences are like in between those points.

And of course you can make all the dimensions every ball park. Especially as new ones were built.

I get that you like baseball and its history, which is totally fine. I am just speaking from the point of view that baseball stat records generally mean nothing to me because there to too many variables.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Field A was Coors Fiels in denver, field B was Safeco. They are very similar looking, the walls look pretty much the same except flipped. Safeco has a taller wall down the line in left, Coors has one in right. Regardless the angles and heights of the walls are not accounting for 40+ home runs per season.

You can set them the same, but you can't make one set of dimensions that will work for everyone. Besides, its not like anyone has a stadium like the Polo Grounds with a 20 foot high fence 430+ feet away and ridiculously short fences straight down the line.

When it comes to a lot of things, I'll be the first to say baseball needs to get with the times and modernize a little bit. But not this, I like having different fields. Early on it was impossible to standardize because there wasn't room to do so. Now it just kind of adds to the strange game that baseball is. The offense can't touch the ball, the foul pole is in fair terrritory, the goal is to get a hit every at-bat but if you fail to do so 60% of the time you're a legend, the managers wearthe same uniforms as the players, hitting and running are two of the major parts of the game but if you're not good at one ofbthe two someone can come in and do it for you, its the only sport that a blister can cause you to miss a game, there's no time limit and therefore no ties (except in the all-star game), there's only one way to switch back to offense from defense and that's to get 3 outs, blah blah blah. Point is, baseball has a certain uniqueness and charm to it and a large part of that is the fields that almost have their own personality. I can see how it may seem rational to standardize the fields.but baseball isn't always the most rational sport. If a batter swings and misses at strike 3 and the catcher drops the ball, the batter can advance to first, if he makes it the pitcher still gets credited with a strikeout even though no out was recorded. Doesn't really make sense, doe it?

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

I totally get your point about not being able to make them completely equal in terms of factors people cannot control, such as the thickness of the atmosphere. It is what it is. But field dimensions are within control.

I am not sure I follow the early on there was not room to standardize argument. If there were standard requirements, that would have dictated where you could build a field. And as time has gone on, it would be easy to standardize to the smallest field if need be. 50 and 48 years separate the now two oldest stadiums, Fenway and Wrigley, respectively, and the next oldest, Dodger Stadium. That means there was A LOT of opportunity to standardize to, say, Fenway's dimensions. Or, because baseball is as quirky as you say, give Fenway and Wrigley grandfathered exceptions.

We will just agree to disagree. It is not going to change regardless, I just think it is dumb, and I would bet that I am not in the minority.

 

[bobflipaburger]

Early on the land available dictated the design of the field, that's why in Boston you have the green monster. There was no room for a left field fence of normal depth since there's a street runniing by there. So they made the green monster to compensate. For a while in the 60s, 70s, 80s field design got more conventional, but then Camden Yards came along in the early 90s and that started a bit of a shift. Now most of the stadiums built don't have and outfield wall that arcs like it was drawn with a pencil on a string, exceptions being Atlanta and St. Louis.

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

I understand what happened. I am saying it was a missed opportunity to do it when it would not have cost any additional money as teams were building new stadiums anyways.

 

[Seattlehawk94]

Standardizing them would fuck up stats worse than now..You have parks like Coors where the extra distances are needed due to altitude and places where the heat of summer makes the ball carry, not to mention places with heavy air where the ball won't carry without shorter fences...It's what makes baseball special...

 

[Seattlehawk94]

Oh and fuck Sabrmetrics...

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

Standardizing them would fuck up stats worse than now..You have parks like Coors where the extra distances are needed due to altitude and places where the heat of summer makes the ball carry, not to mention places with heavy air where the ball won't carry without shorter fences...It's what makes baseball special...

Special as in stupid.

Every sport that plays outdoor has to deal with that. At least it would be a variable removed. At this point, virtually no historical record in baseball means anything to me.

 

[bobflipaburger]

So I suppose all golf courses should be the same too?

 

[SeaHawksHuddle]

Tiger Woods doesn't have a course that he plays the majority of his games at.

Good try though. I had to think for a second...