As the Major League Baseball season reaches its zenith in the coming days, three teams excluded from the 2012 playoffs announced during the first week of October that they were already preparing to make adjustments for next season - not just to their rosters, presumably, but to their home ball parks, too.
The San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners - who ranked 28th and 29th, respectively, out of 30 MLB teams in terms of home runs per home game this season - announced that their outfield fences will be moved in during off-season stadium renovations, while the Chicago Cubs will be moving the brick wall behind home plate closer to the action at near-century-old Wrigley Field for the second time in seven years.
The Padres' Petco Park will see fence distances shortened by 12 feet (to 390) in left-center field and by 11 feet (to 391) in right-center. The Mariners will see Safeco Field's left-field power alley shrink from 390 to 378 feet and the fence straightened as it heads toward center field and the park's deepest point at 405, four feet shorter than before. The Cubs have been granted permission by the Commission on Public Landmarks to move the brick wall behind home plate to accommodate 56 new seats, a more modest renovation compared to the three rows added from dugout to dugout before the 2004 season.
The smaller outfields at Petco and Safeco are expected to boost power numbers in those parks, but conventional wisdom might also hold that Wrigley's latest change will render the friendly confines all the more confined and all the friendlier for hitters (think extended at bats and improved batting averages). In 2003, a Cubs team that came within one victory of advancing to the World Series hit .258 for the season both home and away. In 2004, with foul territory reduced by 10 feet around the home plate area, a Cubs team that failed to make the playoffs hit .274 at Wrigley. In fact, the Cubs have posted sub-.265 team averages at home in only two of the nine seasons since the 2003 renovation, peaking at .290 in 2008 (the second of back-to-back playoff years) and bottoming out at .245 this season (in which Chicago's 61-101 record was its worst for a 162-game schedule since 1966).
One can read only so much in the ivy leaves as to what the future - and another row of premium seats - might bring in Chicago. In Seattle, alterations to Safeco, which was designed with an even larger field of play before Ken Griffey Jr. reined in pre-construction plans, are seen as nothing short of game-changing - in more ways than one. "It's a more attractive location now for players outside the organization who might consider coming this direction," said Mariners manager Eric Wedge, as reported by the Associated Press. "I think it's a good decision."
