When the Orioles introduced first-round draft pick Enrique Bradfield Jr. during their previous homestand, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias emphasized the importance the organization puts on Bradfield’s defensive position.
“We have two center fields,” Elias said, “and so we need two center fielders.”
In moving back Camden Yards’ left field wall before last season, the Orioles not only enlarged the playing surface to the point that teams need another top defender in left, but they also created a ballpark that’s one of a kind in Major League Baseball.
Over its three decades, Camden Yards has been a stadium unlike any other, and that now applies to its field of play. Through Wednesday’s games, there have been 533 balls put in play across the majors this season that would have been home runs in 29 of the 30 major league stadiums, based on MLB.com’s Statcast data. In almost 40% of those cases, Camden Yards was the lone exception, with the deep and tall left field wall causing balls hit several rows deep in other stadiums to be estimated as coming short in Baltimore.
Perhaps no one is more familiar with the ballpark’s new layout than Austin Hays, the Orioles’ All-Star left fielder who is tasked with defending in front of the new wall and, as a hitter, trying to clear it.
“You have to have a perfect combination of backspin and the flight of the ball with how hard you hit it,” Hays said. “There’s been three or four balls [I’ve hit] this year that were 106 [mph] at 35 [degrees] that I feel like, ‘That’s a second-deck shot if I’m in a different stadium.’ And it gets caught on the track. It’s 20 feet shy of going out.”
There have been 210 balls hit across the majors this season that would have been home runs in every ballpark but Camden Yards, with the majority of those still clearing the fences because they were hit elsewhere. No other stadium has reached 120 exceptions. The only other venues with more than 100 are Colorado’s Coors Field — believed to have the most spacious fair territory of any ballpark — and San Francisco’s Oracle Park, which has a deep right-center area and the majors’ tallest right field wall.
Trying to balance one of the sport’s most homer-prone venues, the Orioles moved back the left field wall by almost 30 feet, with that cut into the stadium bowl resulting in the wall’s height increasing by more than 5 feet. Before the changes, Camden Yards was a haven for right-handed hitters. In every full season from 2006 to 2021, the Orioles’ home games featured more home runs from right-handed hitters than their road games, with Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark and Coors Field the only other venues that could say the same, according to Baseball Savant.
In 2021, home runs by right-handed batters occurred 33% more often in the Orioles’ home games than their road games, the largest discrepancy in the majors. The new wall has almost reversed that, with right-handed home runs 29% more common in Baltimore’s road games than those at Camden Yards, with only Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Cleveland’s Progressive Field having lower park factors this season.
With the change in dimensions, Camden Yards went from the shortest listed distance to left-center field of any major league ballpark to the second deepest, trailing New York’s Yankee Stadium by a foot, though Camden Yards’ wall is 5 feet taller. In a game in New York earlier this month, Orioles right-hander Tyler Wells surrendered back-to-back home runs that each would have remained in play at only Camden Yards.
“I’m sure that both the guys probably would have been pretty upset if they didn’t get a home run with the way they hit the ball,” Wells said.
Hitters haven’t been shy about expressing those frustrations. After losing a home run on a 29-of-30 ball last year, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge called the changes a “travesty,” referring to Camden Yards as “create-a-park.” The wall robbed longtime Oriole Trey Mancini of more home runs than anyone else last season, with Mancini acknowledging, “no hitters like it, myself included.”
One example of why Mancini felt that way came last June, when he hit a ball with an exit velocity of 106.4 mph, a launch angle of 22 degrees and a projected distance of 410 feet for a double when it would have been a home run anywhere else. On June 18 of this year, a home run by Cincinnati’s Spencer Steer at Houston’s Minute Made Park had an exit velocity of 105.9 mph, a launch angle of 21 degrees and a projected distance of 409 feet, the longest 29-of-30 ball for Camden Yards this season.
As Hays noted, even ideal contact doesn’t guarantee success at Camden Yards. In the past two years, 44.6% of right-handed hitters’ barrels, the quality of contact expected to lead to the best results, hit to left at Camden Yards have become home runs. That rate is above 50% at all other ballparks, with only two other venues under 60%.
“Even the ones that I know I get, I go back and look at the video, and they’re like three rows deep,” Hays said. “They’re still going 10 feet over the fence. For me personally, I feel like I have to get all of the ball and hit it at the perfect angle to hit a homer.”
Part of the organizational thinking behind the changes was the benefits, both quantifiable and psychological, they would have on the Orioles’ pitchers, who had been bludgeoned at record levels in the preceding seasons. In the new wall’s rookie season, Baltimore’s pitching staff produced the sport’s most-improved ERA in nine decades.
The wall has not left Orioles pitchers untouchable. Wells and rotationmate Dean Kremer are two of the 10 pitchers who have allowed at least 22 home runs this season, with the pair surrendering five of the 20 homers that have gone beyond the altered portion of Camden Yards’ left field wall in 2023.
Wells said the changes allow pitchers to be “more aggressive,” a point Kremer echoed in saying Camden Yards is a venue “where you can be more free to pitch to the park.” In the Orioles’ last home game before Friday’s series opener with the Yankees, Kremer allowed a solo shot to Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder James Outman that marked the first home run over the wall by a left-handed hitter.
Hays said the rarity of lefties reaching, let alone clearing, the wall has changed how he plays in front of it. He felt he was starting unnecessarily deep last year, thus allowing balls to drop in front of him. With Hays playing shallower this year, visiting left-handed batters have recorded hits on 30.2% of opposite-field line drives and fly balls compared with 33.9% in 2022.
“Without that thought in the back of your mind — like you need to peek at the wall or feel out where the wall is — you kind of just know you have a ton of ground to work with,” Hays said. “You can play shallow and basically just run wide open back without having to worry about running into the wall.”
Such adjustments come as you spend more time in a ballpark, veteran starting pitcher Kyle Gibson said. He recalled shagging batting practice in front of the Green Monster at Boston’s Fenway Park — one of four left field walls taller than Camden Yards’ — and having balls repeatedly bound off it to his right. Gibson eventually learned the wall was slightly angled, causing that ricochet.
Gibson signed a one-year, $10 million contract with Baltimore this offseason, and Elias has said he hoped the new dimensions, which could experience slight changes in coming years, encourage more pitchers to sign short-term deals with the Orioles. But Gibson has said the changes didn’t affect his decision, even if they’ve dramatically affected Camden Yards.
“It’s pretty unique,” Gibson said. “I think it’s always good when parks are different sizes and different dimensions. I liked Camden how it was, and I like Camden how it is.”
A ballpark that’s unique in more ways than one.
Yankees at Orioles
Friday, 7:05 p.m.
TV: MASN
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
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