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Thursday, May 26, 2011
Reader Mail of the Day: Can you predict a new park to have a neutral factor?
I enjoy the site and the wide ranging topics that are discussed in the Blog. I ran a search for an idea that interests me about MLB stadiums and their construction. I came across 106 articles that mention ‘stadiums’, but do not address my query. My question is this, considering park factors with a 3 year data regression correlates if a stadium is a pitchers or hitters park, is it possible given a site, a team can have an engineering team working in conjunction with the construction contractor and quite possibly a physicist to determine the dimensions within regulation required to construct a park with a neutral, hitter positive or pitcher positive park or would they need to build within the allotted area taking in consideration all of the non game related factors, open the park, check the data and readjust later to achieve the desired result, preferably a neutral park? It would seem to be an advantage to have a stadium with a neutral park factor and it does not hinder you r roster construction. I apologize for the rambling nature of this question.
How well can we call a new park? I know that MGL will come up with an initial forecast for a new park, so maybe he can shed some light from his experience.
Has anyone tracked this? It does seem that the mew Yankee Stadium and Mets park took people by surprise. Did anyone guess Coors?
Anyway, what conditions make it the hardest to establish the neutrality of a park? Being by the lake? Being in a windy city?