(no subject)

Fascinating article today about Citi Field and how one projection (by Greg Rybarczyk of Hit Tracker) is that it will play as the new "Grand Canyon" in the National League:

[W]hen you compare the dimensions you get there for Citi Field with the ones for Shea Stadium that you get from overhead satellite photos, you will see that Citi Field is actually deeper in almost every part of the park, and by a large amount. You will see that only in the corners is Shea deeper

...

Really, Citi Field is not even close to Shea dimension-wise, and home runs will be drastically reduced. I predict this because over the last three years, my analysis of every home run hit in MLB revealed that approximately 29% of all home runs have cleared the fence by 10 feet or less. At least half of the Citi Field outfield fence is either 10 or more feet deeper, or effectively 10 or more feet deeper due to a combination of longer distance and higher fence height.

Combined with the upgrades in the bullpen (and one or two more arms both in the rotation and the pen would be nice), this sounds like a lot of 2-1 and 3-1 games at Citi this year, and maybe, if he matches his performance from last year, a NL Cy Young for Santana. (His results would be markedly increased, both from the ballpark effects and from the pen not blowing seven of his wins.)

I just hope I can afford to get to a game or two this summer, before they start making the inevitable changes to foster offense.