Camden Yards has always been known for being a very hitter-friendly ballpark, susceptible to an above-average amount of home runs. This was especially the case with right-handed hitters who pull the ball toward left field. Since 1992 when Camden Yards opened, the left-field wall was around seven feet high and had a distance of 333 feet that would stretch to about 364 feet in the left center. The Orioles haven’t been to the playoffs since 2016 and haven’t won a playoff game since 2014. It’s been a long drought, without any hope for this team. The fan base still looks for any beacon of hope. In 2018 they lost 115 games, in 2019 they lost 108, in the 2020 shortened COVID season they still finished 10 games under .500. Last season they continued to go backward, losing another 110 games. General Manager, Mike Elias, and Owner, Peter Angelos, felt that a lot of losses came because of the short porch wall out in the left field. Where bigger named stars can just hit a fly ball and the wind will carry it out of the wall for a home run.
They decided to make Oriole Park more difficult for right-handed hitters and that the wall was one of the center points as to why they were losing so many games.
Peter Angelos spent $3.6M on a complete renovation to the left-field wall. No longer will the walls be 7 feet high. They raised the wall to 13 feet, making it impossible to rob a HR and harder to hit the ball out in the first row. They also decided to raise the difficulty a step further. They pushed the wall back from 333 feet in left and 364 feet in left-center to 384 feet in left and 400 feet in left-center, going as far as 416 feet in deep left-center. Showing that if hitters want to hit a home run in Camden Yards, they had to get every stitch of that ball.
It also creates a different defensive dynamic. Left fielders will have to play more back to cover for the extra grass now behind them. Doing that gives small-ball hitters like the Orioles an easier opportunity to hit for base hits in front of the fielders.
For the Yankees, that will raise the stakes a bit because they have hit the most home runs by an opposing team in Camden Yards history. In a video, I have posted above, you can see all the home runs since 2019, by current Yankees players. With the new left-field dimensions they will no longer be home runs. This affects a few hitters in the current starting lineup, especially Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres. We may not know it yet, but we will no longer be seeing Camden Yards as a hitter-friendly ballpark. The Orioles like their chances to play small-ball. If they can keep the ball in the field, they will have a good chance to win some close ball games. With not many power-hitting-righties in their line-up, this doesn’t affect the Orioles all that much. The Yankees, who are a very home run oriented team, will have to make the proper adjustments to earn runs and grab wins. The Orioles won 8 of a possible 19 games against the Yankees last year. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, that’s 3 more wins than they had against any other team in baseball. While nobody is talking about this, the left-field wall could be a major game-changer for years to come, especially against the New York Yankees.
Produced and Written by: Sean Negron (@seannegron26)
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