Mel Antonen of USA Today has an article up about all of the homers flying out of Yankee Stadium:
Indeed, two months into the season the most expensive stadium ever built is being tormented by unpredictable winds and beset by a chaotic debate over whether the home runs there are the cheapest aspect of the $1.5 billion ballpark. "There's no doubt that the new Yankee Stadium has taken over as the best hitters' park in baseball," Baltimore Orioles first baseman Aubrey Huff says. "Someone's going to hit 90 home runs there."
And, yes, by any measure the homers are up. But that's not the whole story. That's because while the homers are up in dramatic fashion, overall offense, while up as well, is not up in nearly as dramatically. As Replacement Level Yankees' Weblog noted last week, Yankee Stadium's park factor on the young season is 106, which favors offense. Fenway Park's park factor over the past five seasons is . . . 106.
Granted, it's painfully early to be talking park effects -- guys who know more about these things than I do tend to want at least three years of data before making anything approaching a definitive conclusion -- but helping to to put the numbers in perspective, Coors Field's lowest ever park factor was 107, and for years sported park factors between 108 and 129, which made for a substantially more offense-friendly environment than anything we're seeing in New York.
I don't suppose that makes the guys giving up the dingers any happier, but it does put lie to the claim that Yankee Stadium is "Coors East."
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For the record, Fenway Park has depressed HRs since the late 1980s and is currently 18th out of 30.
Fenway may have fewer homeruns but it will always have the Green Monster, making a lot of catchable balls to left field into doubles.
Keep in mind, the Rangers, who lead the world in HR's year after year, are rolling in to the new headquarters of the Evil Empire tonight for the first time. Talk numbers to me on Monday......
"For the record, Fenway Park has depressed HRs since the late 1980s and is currently 18th out of 30."
For the record, most of America is tired of having Boston sports shoved in our face... If the Red Sox ever win another title it'll be way too soon... most annoying fans ever
I'm glad there is no longer talk about Citzens Bank Park (Phillies) being a "bandbox".
Holy crap, I knew there were a lot of homeruns being hit in New Yankee but I had no idea its Park Factor sorted by HR is 1.65! () (remove spaces)
Yea I can see the overall offensive park factor being far less than the homer park factor. Like all "modern" stadiums, the new Yankee Stadium was constructed to be "intimate" which means seats close to the field and therefore less foul territory where fielders have the chance of catching pop-ups and generating early outs.
Dodger's Stadium used to be an extreme pitchers park because of its expansive foul territory, but then they added some seats or something a few years ago, reducing the foul territory and now it's less of a pitchers park.