Make Edgar close it and leave it closed unless the day is spectacular.
It seems like the easiest fix for the lower end of our offensive woes. The other part - the high end - is harder to fix.
As is ably illustrated in this Jayson Stark article, the age of the crushing offenses is over. It's why I said last year that Fielder was a good buy despite the cost because of his age and because getting great offensive pieces will only get harder.
You might notice that nobody's hitting the market. Tulo? Locked up. Cargo? Same thing. Votto? locked up.
The Brewers had to make a choice and took Braun over Fielder, otherwise Prince would never have made the open market either. Ethier didn't and he's not even the best hitter on his team. Kemp was extended for a fortune.
There aren't a lot of offensive talents any more and the odds of getting them, especially in their prime, are going way down.
Have to draft them or trade for them. Which is what Jack's been trying to exploit before everybody else figures out that pitchers are easier to find now than hitters. That's why we got Smoak, Montero, F-Mart, Trayvon, Chiang, and Wells in trades, while also re-stocking pitching with Furbush, Beavan, Noesi and crew.
The year I wanted him to draft a pitcher he took a cross-fire pitcher (Hultzen), a newer breed of arm starting to show up (also briefly discussed in Stark's article). But it was a good pitching year, and Hultzen's making him look like a genius.
This year he took one of the biggest HR hitters in college (which has been nice enough deaden their own bat to give a better read of the power potenial of collegiates).
But he took him at a glove position so that if he doesn't work out to as much power as we'd like he's still good positionally. I hope that becomes a positive for us either way.
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That still doesn't help the plus side of the ledger as far as runs goes. We're going back to the 70s and 80s as far as power goes, and parks built in the 90s to play "fair" with all the crazy offense now look ENORMOUS to non-roided hitters.
The other way to fix that is to move the fences in, as has already been discussed. 20 years from now there are two possible solutions: one, somebody proves that HGH is good for you, and it's allowed, or two, the newer parks they're building at that point are cozier.
Because chicks dig the long ball and 1-0 pitching duels don't sell tickets. Television ratings matter, and they recovered when hitters could hit. I don't think the league is gonna let viewership lag no matter how much they push their Verlanders.
In the meantime we need to figure it out in the Northwest in our already-built park. First, close the roof next year if the temp is under 80. If that doesn't help as much as we want, then start talking about the fences. I'd prefer to let it be a roof issue and let the park simply pay fair with the non-roiders - I do not want to move the fence.
If the Rangers are proving that the excuses of heat and park were not gonna be accepted by their owners as reasons for terrible pitching down the stretch, then I really don't want to accept that simply hitting doubles instead of homers is a curse for our offense.
But if our pitchers are Felix / Vargas / Walker / Hutzen / Paxton or whatever, with a bullpen of 99 mph torchers, then moving the fences in will do more for our offense than against our pitching.
Gotta do whatcha gotta do, and you can't win if you don't score. In Safeco right now, we don't score.
~G
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Chris sez,
.. One reason balls flew out in the Kingdome was that it a domed stadium, and therefore climate controlled to a certain extent. We won't see that kind of offense in Safeco unless they decide to enclose it completely.
He's right. The climate control was a big part of what made it hitter-friendly.
Baker pointed out yesterday that Arizona routinely closes the roof when it's too hot there. No reason at all the Mariners can't routinely close the roof when it's below 50 or 55 degrees, or when there's a threat of drizzle, or when they have any excuse at all.
The "floating ping-pong ball" effect is mostly eliminated with the roof closed. That's logical, and it's been the consistent report of the players since it was built.
They are going to study the ballpark config this winter, and hopefully that will "raise awareness" enough that they'll be able to convince Armstrong that the sensible thing is just to hit the blinkin' button in April and May.
Dr. D has a clear prediction here. He thinks that this winter's study will capture a dozen different solutions, most of them costly, all of them with major disadvantages, and then they're going to show the Committee the stats that prove you get just as much benefit by closing the roof when it's cold. And then they'll sit around a long table and draw up a procedure for Armstrong, one that diminishes the personal discretion, and next year (hopefully) we'll see the roof closed 60, 80% of the time in April and May.
And that will draw the poisonous fangs that are eating a lot of the Mariners' hitters this year.
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Friday night, I was out and about and the thought occurred, hey, maybe I should run by Safeco. I'll go drop some coin on the baseball game, mezzanine and so forth. And then I remembered that the pitching matchup was not exciting, so the top half of the inning would be boring. And then I remembered that all of their hitters are telling me that there's a good reason that they get shut out every home game. Don't expect much, fanboy; it's not our fault.
There you go. The first time this year when I figured that the Seattle Mariners weren't worth three hours of my time. There's no use going down and blowing my mad money to go down and watch them hang their heads all night. Who needs it. ( ... caught a couple of innings on TV and was glad I skipped the game.)
Not saying that they're wussies; I've been saying the opposite of that. Hey, they were psyched up and ready to attack when they were coming off this road trip. It's that, whatever the cause, there is a problem, and this problem ruins the home games.
It is the suits' job to fix it, period. I am the customer here and they are the shoe salesmen. I'll buy when I want their product, and I won't want it until their hitters are fun to watch, at home.
How do you picture the CLOSE ROOF button? I picture a rounded red button, about 3" across, with a sign above it like in the 1960's Batman series. Change that sign from "ROOF ACTUATION PROCESS" to "OFFENSE: ARM SWITCH."
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Comments
Baseballs flew out of the ballpark in Colorado.
So. Experts decided that the high altitude and low humidity of Denver dried out the baseballs too much.
A humidor was built to store the baseballs and keep them from drying out.
Baseballs do not fly out of Safeco.
If they are stored in some random storage room, perhaps the low altitude and frequent rain of Seattle make the baseballs too moist.
They can tweak the baseballs in ways that are subtle and invisible to the fan. This approach has to be part of the evaluation. Good stuff shawk.
That said, if the problem is a Ping-Pong Machine updraft off the ocean, then addressing that airflow (with the roof) has got to be the most integral and natural redress.
We're not going to buy any claims that they anticipated the airflow problem when they designed the park, so it's on them to fix unforseen potholes... if this requires less-than-appealing solutions, that is life in the big city... you buy a house, you gotta deal with the water runoff into the neighbor's yard...
Close the roof or bring in the fences and the opposition will continue to win at the Safe, just with more scoring. That is, unless we have better pitchers. Hmmm, isn't that what we've been drafting in recent years? Also, as long as Safeco is perceived as a pitcher's park, we won't attract FA hitters (we won't pay them either, so there's that). The kids just need to develop and play better ball here.
And how it destroys hitters up and down the coast.
Over the past five years, the six coastal parks in the west have been among the eight toughest in the Majors to create offense. Seattle is the most difficult place to produce runs and homers in the American League, followed by Oakland. In the National League, no park is tougher to score in than San Diego, with San Francisco even slightly harder on home-run hitters than Petco Park. Bodies of water are found near each park.
and:
"Playing on the West Coast, it's a notable difference," said Trumbo, who is third in the AL in OPS at .991. "The first month of the season, especially, there's a dead zone. There have been two or three balls I hit this year that I thought I got all of it, and it gets caught on the warning track -- or short of the track.
"Being on the other side is no fun either. In April, September, you'll see a guy crush one and have nothing to show for it. I've heard a few choice words over there [at first]. I hit my first home run to right field at home this year against [Ivan] Nova. The ball carries best here to center."
...
"In Colorado, I hit a ball to left that I thought at best was going to move the runners up," said Trumbo, who leads the Angels with 15 homers after hitting 29 as a rookie in 2011. "It was a normal fly ball, and it kept going and turned into a three-run homer.
"Then we're in Oakland, and I hit one that I know is gone. It's only a matter of how far gone. Then I look out there, and Coco Crisp is catching it one step on the warning track."
It's not only a Mariners problem, but we need to figure out how to mitigate it as much as we'd like to. Smaller park, closed roof...
Or simply never getting another free agent hitter to sign here ever and accepting that, while making sure to advertise heavily to FA pitchers on the wonders we can do for their ERA.
And somebody tell Smoak that it gets better in July and August, we promise.
~G
I wonder if Ghost/Matt could speculate for us if the idea of sails as both a decorative touch and a way to break up air flow would have an effect (actually the Mariners should just hire him to form a consulting team to study the marine layer's effects and ways to predict/mitigate them). It would seem the sail idea might satisfy those who want the "experience" and those who want fly balls to left and left center to float less. It seems easier and more aesthetic than changing the walls (though, again, 10-12 feet between the bullpen and dead center might be useful, too, without killing the pitchers). Having served on both cruisers and carriers, I am aware of how breaking up the wind flow can have both useful, and unpredictable, effects. This is an area where the cost of a low draft choice (or a fraction of Figgin's salary) for a scientific study could really provide useful competitive info.
I think there is a company in Seattle that knows something about airflow and turbulence. The name is on the tips of my my fingers on my keyboard...
I agree that sufficient expertise exists at Boeing or at UW - Matt, however, cares, where Frank Shrontz hasn't seemed to, even though he owns part of the team and is on the board.