The solution to the Mariners’ offensive problems would seem simple. Unable to hit for power at Safeco Field, especially to left field, the Mariners obviously are freaked out to the point that they aren’t hitting for average, either.
The answer, you might assume, is to move the fences closer to the plate. If the people can’t reach you, you must reach the people, right?
Not only would smaller dimensions give the Mariners’ right-handed hitters a home-run target they could reach, they might relax enough that they’d actually improve their overall production.
That would be the logical assumption. Safeco is a cavern, particularly to left, and moving the fence would change everything.
To blow that argument apart, I present the Fenway Factor.
If any right-handed hitter should hit with confidence, shouldn’t it be at Fenway Park in Boston, where the Green Monster is a mere 310 feet from the plate down the left-field line? All it takes to homer there is a fly ball that wouldn’t reach the warning track at Safeco (where it’s 331 feet down the left field line).
The Mariners’ key right-handers surely have better career power numbers at Fenway than they do at Safeco. Don’t they?
Well, they don’t.
The Mariners’ home run percentage (homers per at-bat) at Fenway are nearly identical to what they hit at Safeco.
Combining the career numbers of Bret Boone, Rich Aurilia, Edgar Martinez, Scott Spiezio, Randy Winn, Dan Wilson and Jolbert Cabrera, they have homered in three percent of their career at-bats at Fenway (20-for-750). At Safeco, it’s also three percent (122-for-3,672). Penciling it out a few decimals, the numbers actually favor Safeco, .0332 to .0266.
Individually, the percentages (rounded to the nearest whole number) are just as similar.
Martinez: 9-for-254 at Fenway (4 percent), 50-for-1,165 at Safeco (4 percent).
Boone: 4-for-86 at Fenway (5 percent), 52-for-1,044 at Safeco (5 percent).
Wilson: 1-for-146 at Fenway (1 percent), 12-for-824 at Safeco (1 percent).
Winn: 3-for-128 at Fenway (2 percent), 6-for-360 at Safeco (2 percent).
Spiezio: 2-for-110 at Fenway (2 percent), 1-for-110 at Safeco (1 percent).
Aurilia’s numbers are a little skewed because he has played just three games at Fenway, hitting one homer among his nine at-bats early this season (he’s 1-for-108 at Safeco). Cabrera hasn’t homered at Fenway or Safeco.
Granted, the M’s face a healthy dose of right-handed pitching at Fenway, including one tough guy named Pedro Martinez. But he doesn’t pitch every day there.
Further evidence that a closer fence doesn’t produce more home runs, there were more homers at Safeco than at Fenway in the 2000, 2001 and 2002 seasons.
Still, baseball is a game that plays on the mind as much as it does the body.
Couldn’t the Mariners go ahead and move the fence closer to the plate and make their flailing hitters feel better about themselves?
“Sure,” Mariners president Chuck Armstrong said. “The ballpark was specifically designed to do that.”
Since July, 1999, when the ballpark opened to a lot of questions about how fair it would play for the hitters, Armstrong has given a standing invitation to the organization’s baseball people – former general managers Woody Woodward and Pat Gillick, current GM Bill Bavasi and field managers Lou Piniella and Bob Melvin.
“I told everybody if they wanted to discuss (moving the fence), let’s discuss it,” Armstrong said.
So far, nobody has taken him up on the offer.
Judgment calls
* Wasn’t that a nice ceremony the Brewers had last week for M’s hitting coach Paul Molitor? Now, can someone conduct a seance to help Molitor connect with his hitters?
* Hiram Bocachica isn’t the answer to what truly ails the Mariners, but he needs to stay in the lineup. Bocachica brings speed and an all-out hustle that gives the team much-needed energy on both offense and defense.
* And, while Bob Melvin is at it, he might as well write Ramon Santiago’s name on the lineup card more often, too. He’s a solid shortstop with good range (remember that?) and brings a youthful exuberance to an older been-there, can’t-do-that-anymore team.
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