Cybermetrics points to a Bill James article that explores the idea that teams that play in parks that favor the pitcher are better than teams than play in parks that favor the batter. A quick synopsis is that the more your park favors hitters, the worse the team plays on the road. As with most Bill James work, the article is well worth your time.

This begs the question, how do you avoid extreme parks? Do you not allow teams to play at altitude? Mandate 30 foot fences in the outfield? Deaden the ball?

What if new buildings change the character of your static park? This happened to Wrigley Field. Before the NL built a number of new, fairly neutral stadiums in the 1960s and 1970s, Wrigley wasn’t that extreme. Then the Mets, Dodgers, Pirates, Reds, and Cardinals, and Giants all moved into stadiums that tended to favor pitchers, so Wrigley suddenly was an outlier.

A big part of the Cubs failure to win a World Series for so many years simply came from other teams lowering the bar for having an extreme stadium!

Teams do tinker with stadiums a lot more than in prior years. The best example recently was Baltimore moving fences back to prevent home runs. I suspect we’ll see more of this. It’s another way to suppress offense that MLB needs to counter.