Considering Steve Balboni holds the record for Kansas City with 36 home runs, it’s always been assumed and argued that Kauffman is a non-home run hitter’s park. I’ve discussed this in great detail (three part series) earlier this season. I don’t believe the reason 36 is the HR record is because of Kauffman. I believe it is because KC has never had a tremendous HR hitter. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact.
If you just read one of these, read Part III
Is the K the hardest place to hit homers? Part I
Is the K the hardest place to hit homers? Part II
Is the K the hardest place to hit homers? Part III
Even so, that doesn’t mean Kauffman doesn’t contribute to fewer home runs. I’d say 25% of the reason is the stadium, 75% is the lack of powerful HR hitters.
Since the All-Star game is tonight at Kauffman, I thought it would be interesting to look at something I’ve never looked at before. And, I had to dig to get this.
For a long time, I’ve wondered how many square feet there are in fair territory at Kauffman Stadium or any other stadium for that matter. Nobody ever talks about that, but that’s the holy grail as far as I’m concerned. Sure, some parks have higher fences and are tailor-made for certain hitters and are in hotter climates or indoors or whatever. That’s another issue entirely. I just wanted to know the single most important issue (less Colorado). What is the square footage of the field in play?
I discovered a list done by a very good researcher named Greg Rybarczyk. He calculated all the square footage for each park. Tom Tango, who wrote The Book – Playing the Percentages in Baseball, took Rybarczyk’s square footages and converted them into a consistent radius – meaning how far the fence would be from home plate if it were the same throughout the outfield.
As it turns out, Kauffman Stadium is the second largest. Ironically, the largest is Coors Field where home runs fly out like they were golf balls. That shows what thin air will do.
The only thing that would be better than this list would be to calculate what the average minimum length of a home run would be. That would require factoring in height of fences as well. But, that would be vastly more complicated math. This is good enough for today.
The average distance is 373’ for all stadiums to all fences. I added the percentage above and below (+/-) 373’ for each park. Note: You can’t figure +/- based upon square feet or it will be misleading, but I won’t go into why.
| Feet | +/- | Sq. Feet | Field | Home Team |
| 387 | +4% | 117,858 | Coors Field | Colorado |
| 385 | +3% | 116,473 | Kauffman Stadium | Kansas City |
| 382 | +2% | 114,655 | Citi Field | N.Y. Mets |
| 381 | +2% | 114,049 | Comerica Park | Detroit |
| 380 | +2% | 113,246 | Angels Stadium | LA Angels |
| 379 | +2% | 112,988 | Turner Field | Atlanta |
| 379 | +2% | 112,843 | Chase Field | Arizona |
| 377 | +1% | 111,741 | Busch Stadium | St. Louis |
| 376 | +1% | 110,895 | PETCO Park | San Diego |
| 375 | +1% | 110,681 | AT&T Park | San Francisco |
| 375 | +1% | 110,579 | PNC Park | Pittsburgh |
| 375 | +1% | 110,276 | Rangers Ballpark | Texas |
| 373 | — | 109,105 | Rogers Centre | Toronto |
| 371 | -1% | 108,160 | Wrigley Field | Chicago Cubs |
| 371 | -1% | 107,905 | McAfee Coliseum | Oakland |
| 371 | -1% | 107,718 | Nationals Park | Washington |
| 370 | -1% | 107,704 | Safeco Field | Seattle |
| 370 | -1% | 107,721 | Metrodome | Minnesota |
| 370 | -1% | 107,233 | New Yankee Stadium | N.Y. Yankees |
| 369 | -1% | 107,191 | Miller Park | Milwaukee |
| 369 | -1% | 106,988 | Dodger Stadium | LA Dodgers |
| 369 | -1% | 106,843 | Oriole Park | Baltimore |
| 368 | -1% | 106,430 | Minute Maid Park | Houston |
| 368 | -1% | 106,080 | Sun Life Stadium | Miami Marlins |
| 367 | -2% | 105,600 | Tropicana Field | Tampa Bay |
| 366 | -2% | 105,495 | U.S. Cellular Field | Chicago WS |
| 365 | -2% | 104,724 | Great American Park | Cincinnati |
| 365 | -2% | 104,644 | Citizen’s Bank Park | Philadelphia |
| 364 | -2% | 104,343 | Progressive Field | Cleveland |
| 364 | -2% | 104,187 | Fenway Park | Boston |
In conjunction with this is a very interesting ESPN Home Run Tracker site which is produced by none other than Greg Rybarczyk. When you go to it, click on “Park Overlays” on the top menu. You can actually overlay one park onto another. If you choose your primary ballpark to be Kauffman, you can overlay any other ball park. It’s quite interesting.
As you can see, the only one that is equivalent to Kauffman is Coor’s Field. On the other hand, if you overlay Progressive Field, it’s 10.4% smaller and that’s significant. But, if you are thinking in terms of how easy it is to hit a home run in Progressive Field versus Kauffman Stadium, you have to factor in that Progressive Field has a 19’ left field wall. The walls in center and right are 8’ – the same as Kauffman in all three fields.
Martin Manley
Sports In Review
SportsInReview.com
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Coors Field is th eperfect example of why the size of the field is secondary to other factors. But, then if that’s true, why is the K such a hard place to hit homers? Oh, because it’s big! I tend to agree. Kansas City has never had a legitimate home run league leading threat and probably never will. They showed last night that a great HR hitter can knock them out of the K just as easy as anywhere else within reason.
Someting I have always wondered about is whether there are more home runs hit in the hot weather. I heard Hud mention that a week ago or so. That once that hot weather came along there would be more offense and I think he specifically stated home runs. I don’t know if that’s because of humidity or pitchers tire easier or even if it is true. I’d like to know, though. It might give me more reason to be optimistic about KC’s hitting.
Handy:
I think I overheard him say that too. Maybe that’s just a well-known fact… one that I either never knew or knew and forgot. I think I’ll do some research on that.
Martin
The people who designed Coors Field made a big mistake, in my opinion. They tried to create a larger field to keep home runs from flying out, but that just made the park a better place to hit. Now, since the balls still fly out in the thinner air, and since the outfielders play with their backs to the wall, flairs fall for hits more often. Doubles and triples plug the larger gaps in the outfield. Instead of decreasing offense, they have actually increased it with the larger field. It is an absolute MUST for the Rockies to have 3 fast outfielders, because there is a lot of ground to cover (which is why Dante Bichette in LF was a VERY bad idea).
If they wanted to decrease offense at Coors, one idea would be to move home plate up about 10 feet. Sure that would increase HRs, but it would also increase the foul ball area (which, from watching baseball at the Oakland Coliseum, defintitely decreases offense) and decrease the amount of outfield the outfielders have to control.
John Mayberry was a legit Home run hitter in 1975.
It isn’t that Mayberry wasn’t a legit home run hitter. In 1975, he had 34. But, that was just one year. The next year he had 13 in 161 games. Name me a true home run hitter that everyone knows the name that hit 13 home runs in 161 games when they were 26 years old.
Mayberry was a second-level home run hitter in the majors. Even when you cherry-pick his prime HR seasons from 1972-1980, he still is only #8 on that list behind Schmidt, Jackson, Kingman, Bench, Stargell, Bonds and Luzinski. If you were to look only at his entire career from 1970-82, he’s 13th. In his career he is #192.
I reread your part III and it’s impossible to argue with – for me at least. There are definitely places harder to hit home runs than the K. KC simply can’t afford to keep or get great home run hitters that are in their prime. I’m confident Fielder could hit just as many at the K as he could in Detroit. It’s a shorter wall in right in Detroit, but longer in right center and center. Besides, few of his home runs are borderline anyway.
The other thing is surely you didn’t need Tom Tango to figure the average distance. It’s just area times four since we’re looking for 1/4 the area of a circle. Then divide by pi. Then take the square root of that and you have the radius – which is the distance to the fence.
dm:
I didn’t need anyone to figure it out, but he had already done it in a post that I saw, so I figured I would just use his numbers and credit him.
Martin
One thing that sort of surprises me about this is that the difference between the biggest and smallest park is only 5.9% from 387 to 364. I’ll accept that 5.9% is a measureable difference, but it just doesn’t seem to justify the differences hit in home runs.
I did a little analysis and what I found surprised me a little. Arizona is 4% bigger than Cleveland. That is a big difference since the range from biggest to smallest is 5.9%. I looked at the last 10 years and Arizona has more HRs at home than the road by 100. 839-739. Cleveland has more home runs on the road than home by 75. 845-770.
I guess the desert air helps Arizona overcome the size of the stadium. Cleveland doesn’t make sense to me.
JV:
That Cleveland stat is strange. Not sure what to make of it.
Martin
Will:
The 5.9% does seem small, but it goes to show how much just a little difference can make.
Martin
117,000 square feet is such a big number. That would be 117 houses the size I grew up in! We had three bedrooms. My bedroom was about 1/10 of the house. So, I try to visualize 1,117 of by bedrooms overlayed on the field and it’s just dot. Until I was about eight, I used to stand in my room and swing a plastic bat at a plastic ball until I broke a window. Everytime I would hit it I would call it a home run.
XM:
Reminds me of my childhood except the only toys I had was a stick and rock and I couldn’t bring them into the house. I did, however, also put out a window with them!
Martin
Martin, great list. I’ve always wondered the same thing so as to be able to compare all parks apples to apples – at least as it pertains to size.
You are right that there are other variables, but you have to start with something that is consistent across the board. I would like to see the average height of the walls in addition to the average distance to the wall. Then that could be factored in as well. After that, you would just have external air-related issues.
The list is good and everything, but if a park had a very easy right porch and a very hard everything else, all the home team has to do is load up on left-handed hitters and that skews the results. Part of the problem with the K might be that it is basically symmetrical. There is no easy part of the park, so KC can’t manipulate the numbers.
That would be another interesting study. Do home runs correlate with the symmetry of the park?
I went to the overlay and looked at the other parks that appear to be the most symmetrical. I used my list in Part III mentioned in the story to evaluate those parks and I couldn’t see any correlation at all. The average HR friendliness of the symmetrical parks was basically average.
I like your theory, but it just doesn’t appear to matter.
Martin
That overlay is cool. Takes a lot of the mystery out of the parks. I wish you would have done a poll question to your readers about what they thought the average distance to the average fence would be before you told everyone. I think I would have guessed more like 380, but I guess there are some really short distances down the lines that affect the average quite a bit. Thanks for the information.
I like the overlay too, but it could be made much better and it woujldn’t take five minutes. In the drop down menus, they need to add the names of the team next to the names of the fields. How many people know every field that goes with what team? And, it should also be on the graphic. One other thing he could add that would be very nice would be the information you put in your table. The average length to the fence and the total square footage. JMHO
Mickey:
You are absolutely right about that. It wouldn’t take much more to do, but would make it much more user-friendly.
Martin
Troy:
Didn’t think of it. I think I would have thought the average distance to be a little more than 373′ also.
Martin