The loss of Tal’s Hill itself is an unfortunate removal of uniqueness from Minute Maid Park, but it is not the biggest concern that many of us fans have for the way this change is going to effect pitching and play in the park, starting in 2016.
Before we spill too many tears over the loss of Tal’s Hill at MMP next year, we need to consider the larger loss to the way the park plays after this season. So far, all we’ve heard are some fairly unscientific statements about the consequences of bringing in the depth of dead center field from 436 feet to a distance in the 400-405 feet range. We’ve been told that it “probably will not produce an increase of more than 10 to 12 extra home runs per season,” but we have seen no objective studies to support that postulation.
Wouldn’t it have been a greater service to truth if the Astros had done a study of how much the game is going to change in the way it harasses pitcher psyches – and the way the game will be played under these new conditions? We may find that we are about to turn one of the truly unique parks in MLB into the biggest bandbox in play. And how ironic! – In a breakthrough talent-coming-of-age season like 2015, and in the middle of all our shared concerns that we need better starting pitching to stay in the chase this year – those things – may not even matter much in 2016, when pitchers who have learned how to use the grand canyon of our current center field no longer have any advantage at all in the new all-sluggers domination park.
Remember the great catch that Colby Rasmus made early in the Yankees game Friday night, as he glided back to take that long drive only a step away from Tal’s Hill? Check out the following map. Next year, and many other times like that one taken by Rasmus, and far more often than 10 to 12 times per season, the ball caught Friday by Colby Rasmus will next year be a home run. If that same Friday night game had been played next year, the score would have been 1-0, Yankees, after Rasmus watched that long drive sail over the wall – and the young pitcher in that new ballpark would have had to start thinking, “If it’s possible, I don’t want to give up fly balls anywhere in this place, if I can help it.
Minute Maid Parl: Wish we could have drawn a line like this on the field this year and been able to see and count the number of new home runs and doubles we are about to surrender with the new dimensions set for next year. Even better, if the Astros had drawn that visible line this year to study if we really wanted to bring in the fences for the sake of new revenue streams, that would have been so cool to watch this year.
Look, I’m really not as naive as I probably sound here. I know and accept that baseball is a business, an expensive business, and that the Astros need to do all they can bear to produce revenues for all the costs that they have to cover. I also accept that we fans are an all-important revenue stream, but that we are not the ones who get the duns from creditors, if the club doesn’t pay their bills. It works that way in my house too – and we all have to do what is important to the security of our own families and businesses, as long as we keep everything honest and ethical. We all have to adjust to change as change becomes necessary for survival.
As fans, we will adjust to the changes that are going to take place, but we cannot guarantee that we are going to be attracted to games which will be decided mostly by who hits the most home runs – and by Astros clubs that are destined now to live and die even more so in the future by the success or failure of their extraordinary annual searches for pitchers with the special ability for inducing ground balls.
On a closer note about this season, hopefully, the Astros will be able to salvage a split in this four game series with a win over the Yankees on Sunday afternoon.
Tags: Changes at Minute Maid Park in 2016 are going to change the way the game is played.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
June 28, 2015 at 10:57 am |
It might not be a straight line but a curved line. And wouldn’t a line there render those yellow seats in the diagram beyond the bullpen pretty unattractive unless they become the new $1 seats? Who would want to sit there to watch the back of a big fence?
They will not be able to put seats wherever the “batters backdrop” is going to be so the idea that they can just drag those seats in is likely unthinkable.
Like many, I have a love/hate relationship with the hill but I’ve yet to hear a renovation plan that makes business sense on a gameday level. MMP is already on the low side of ballpark capacity without removing a swath of centerfield seats.
June 28, 2015 at 2:41 pm |
Bob’s point should not be ignored. The long term success of seats at that part of the ballpark has to be “iffy.” Remember all the unique areas of the original Astrodome configuration…the Domeskeller comes to mind first. It was in the outfield at field level in RF. It also wasn’t around all that long. Even the original skyboxes were so far from the field the club had major problems selling and filling them. Restaurants came and went. And a seat in the outfield is not a prime location. I, too, am more concerned about taking away “the pitcher’s friend” which was a very deep area from LC to RC when straightaway LF and even RF are not deep (in LF) or high (in RF). The hill, itself, is unique and not a threat to player’s health. Neither is the flagpole, but if someone is determined to remove them that is their call. Making the park play smaller,however, is a significant mistake in my opinion. Someday I see seats on the level where the train is with the train either frozen in deep CF or removed. (They’ll have to put the overflow media somewhere when the club is in the World Series since the current press box was poorly designed just to make room for the Insperity Club.) And that World Series idea may not be all that far away at the club’s current pace of build and development.
June 29, 2015 at 9:31 pm |
I agree with most of what Greg said, however, I disagree that the presence of Tal’s Hill and the flagpole are not threats to player’s health, they most certainly are. The fact that no one has yet been permanently maimed by one of them does not lessen their potential. I believe that George Springer is destined to play CF in Houston. Springer has wiped himself out three times already running into padded walls. God forbid in his zealous pursuit of the baseball that he catch Tal’s Hill and break an ankle or run headlong into the flagpole. It was ludicrous to have included these items in the field of play in the first place. Good riddance to them both I say!!