In late October the New York Mets revealed their plans to bring in the fences at Citi Field. The ballpark, long lamented by fantasy fans everywhere — and David Wright – has killed home run numbers for anyone who steps into the batter’s box. This season the Mets intend to do something about it. The image below shows the changes the Mets are going to make to Citi Field (brought to you by the New York Daily News online).
- Source: New York Daily News
According to Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, “an internal analysis of Citi Field’s first three seasons estimated that the new dimension would have yielded 81 more Mets home runs, and 70 more for opposing teams.”
Assuming those numbers are correct, that works out to 27 more Mets homers per season. Wright has hit 15.4 percent of all the Mets homers over the last three years (53 of the team’s 344) so, if Wright was to claim 15.4 percent of those annual 27 extra homers, he’d be able to add four home runs to his total per season (on average) or 12 homers total over the last three years.
Keeping with that argument, that would have meant two more homers in 2009 (from 10 to 12) seven more homers in 2010 (29 to 36) and three more homers in 2011 (14 to 17). This is obviously a very rudimentary argument, but it does show the kind of numbers we could have seen. And it doesn’t even account for the changes in batting average with warning track fly outs now ending up as home runs or wall balls.
Long story short, this is a great change for players like Wright and — if you ask me — even better for left-handed batters like Ike Davis.
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