According to a blurb in the Daily News today, the Mets have looked into the possibility of lowering a portion of the walls in Citi Field (via The Mets Police).
Daniel Murphy had the most homers of anybody in a Mets uniform with 12 last season. That actually has prompted team brass to revisit the issue of Citi Field's dimensions - or at least the wall heights. Mets officials are considering removing the second level of padding in center field to make the wall eight feet in the area Carlos Beltran patrols. They had maintained late in the season that the stadium would remain identical in 2010.
Taking a look back at some of my photos from Citi Field last year, I happened upon this photo…
It seems the Mets would lower the walls out there to stop at the top of the Nikon sign, instead of the addition second level of padding. If that’s the case, what happens to the apple?
It seems the Mets would have to seriously adjust the “house” for the apple, or have it more than partially exposed as it sits in waiting, which would be a little odd.
I truly believe Citi Field is getting a bad wrap due to a sub-par Mets team in 2009. Too many people believe that the poor team performance by the team last season reflects the face that Citi Field is where home runs go to die, which is simply not true.
As I’ve stated before, Citi Field surrendered the 12th most home runs per game of all stadiums last season, to the tune of 1.057/game.
Added from the comments, by dances_w_vowels:
The actual number of HRs given up by Citi Field is 130, 6th from the bottom in MLB, partially because of the Mets' ineptitude, partially because the park IS huge. It also gave up 42 triples, tied for 4th in the ML. To that, the Park Factor in your link shows that 20% more triples were hit in games played at Citi over games the Mets played on the road. That, more than the HR stat, shows the park plays really big.
Park factors on ESPN have the park listen at .943. (Anything below 1.000 favors the pitcher.)
In that case, why aren’t pitchers lining up to pitch half their games in Citi Field?