I dont see how can deny that Citi is a pitchers park though. I dont think tha was ever really debatable.
"Citi Field, the new ballpark for the New York Mets, is poised to become MLB's new Grand Canyon. City Field is a vast, cool weather, sea-level stadium, and those factors will have a hugely negative impact on home runs.
I'm sure most people have not had access to the drawn-to-scale Citi Field prints, as I have, but when 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, and then only barely so in LF and a bit more so in RF, while Citi Field is a) hugely deeper in RF and RCF, and b) somewhat deeper with much taller fences in LF and LCF.
By the way, I've had other people point out to me that Shea is marked as 410 to center field, and CF is stated to be coming in at 408, so why do I show CF deeper? Because the overhead satellite photos show Shea's fence in straightaway center to be, in reality, about 408 feet from home plate, and the Citi Field prints show the corresponding dimension to be about 410 feet. If they build Citi Field to their prints (which they seem to be doing quite precisely as far as I can tell), then what I show in my diagram will be accurate. I made my diagram by making an exact tracing of the print.
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."
- Eric Simon
