New dimensions at Oracle Park could favor hitters this season
SAN FRANCISCO >> When the San Francisco Giants signed free agent pitcher Kevin Gausman during the offseason, they left out one key detail in their sales pitch.
Gausman, who inked a oneyear, $9.5 million deal with the club in December, couldn’t wait to join the Giants and make half of his starts in the pitcher’s oasis formally known as Oracle Park. No one bothered to tell him the outfield fences were coming in.
“I didn’t know about that till I already signed,” Gausman said, “I was a little, like, ‘What the heck? Now they’re bringing in the fences?’ That’s another issue.”
Triples Alley will remain, but it’s no longer a 421-foot poke out to right center field. The wall in the farthest reaches of the ballpark has been moved in to 415 feet, while the fence in dead center field now sits 391 feet away from home plate as opposed to 399 feet.
After two decades in which the original outfield dimensions
remain unchanged, the Giants took the bullpens out of foul territory and moved them behind the center field fences. The impetus behind the decision was a devastating, season altering concussion former Giants outfielder Mac Williamson suffered after tumbling over the home bullpen mounds in the left field corner while pursuing a flyball hit by Bryce Harper in May 2018.
A year after his injury, Williamson stood in the visitor’s clubhouse at Coors Field and demanded the Giants take action.
“What’s it going to take?” Williamson asked in May, 2019. “Is it going to take somebody to seriously, seriously get hurt? Break a neck or something? For me, there’s room. Somewhere. If you take out some seats. Yeah, it sucks. You’ve got less capacity for fans, but you’ve got safety for players. You can’t say you don’t have room, in my opinion.”
When Jeff Samardzija started Tuesday’s home opener against the Padres, he was the first Giants pitcher to experience the affect of the new dimensions in a regular season game.
Samardzija is a flyball pitcher who had surrendered 64 home runs over his last 74 starts before Tuesday, so the Giants got an idea whether balls that used to die in the marine layer at the warning track will turn into unexpected home runs.
In the third inning, Fernando Tatis Jr., a righthanded hitter, took a Samardzija slider the other way, with the ball barely clearing the fence in right field. In the fourth, Wil Myers crushed a Samardzija fastball 422 feet to center field, well over the moved in fence.
In the first four games at Oracle Park this season, there were 11 home runs. In the Giants’ first four games in April last season, three against Tampa Bay and one against San Diego, there were eight.
The new location of the outfield walls may not be the only reason that could make Oracle Park more attractive to hitters this season, but it appears to be the one known factor. During two weeks of summer workouts, flyballs carried with relative ease into the left field bleachers and onto the right field arcade, leading first-year manager Gabe Kapler to wonder how the experience this season might differ from previous years.
“Coming into that ballpark as a player, I was certainly aware that the ball did not carry well and in particular, the ball did not carry well at night,” Kapler said. “It was a really tough place to go deep. As an opposing manager, I had the same kind of feelings. In our modified camp, the ball did jump out of the ballpark during batting practice, it did jump out of the ballpark during our sim games.”
Kapler said he thought unseasonably warm weather combined with the fact the Giants played most of their scrimmages during the day could have contributed to some of the home runs they saw, but a few hitters also turned Oracle Park into a launching pad during an exhibition scrimmage against the A’s.
Mike Yastrzemski hit ball out above the brick wall in deep right center field and Alex Dickerson deposited an opposite field home run to left center. A’s utility man Chad Pinder, a right-handed hitter, slammed a triple that appeared to land in the first row of the arcade seats above right field and should have been ruled a home run during a replay review.
Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow surmised that because the Giants boarded up the openair viewing area in right field where fans can peer through the fence in front of Mccovey Cove, the wind patterns at the park have changed. With such a small sample size, it’s difficult to know whether Oracle Park will actually play more favorably for hitters over the course of a full season with 81 home games.
Judging what type of an impact the changes to Oracle Park will have over a 30-game sample size with no fans in the stands seems like a fool’s errand. It was only two decades ago when Dodgers shortstop Kevin Elster, hardly a slugger, homered three times in the first game ever played in the stadium, leading to a wild overreaction the Giants had built San Francisco’s version of Coors Field.
Judging whether the Giants will be helped or hurt by any of the changes seems unwise, too. Kapler doesn’t think it’s the distance from the plate to the outfield fences that gives home teams the greatest edge anyway.
“I always believed the biggest home field advantage is really about hitting last in the ninth inning,” Kapler said. “That’s just a real advantage.”