In case you haven't heard the world is coming to an end, the New Stadium needs to be torn down, Derek Jeter will hit a 100 home runs and the season is lost. God I love all this knee-jerk reaction crap to small sample sizes its really astounding how dumb the sports media can be. Yes its true, this weekend the opening of the New Yankee Stadium was one to remember, or perhaps one to forget as the Yankees were shellacked in two of the four games including a record breaking 14 run inning (yes 14 runs) where an astonishing 20 home runs were hit. Of course, such an asuspicious opening was not exactly anticipated by Yankee management, but it has caused a shockwave in sports media everyhwere. Indeed, the pundits like Buster Olney Mike Francesa and a host of others are having a field day with this one, and of course everyone has their theories. Well perhaps its the wind tunnel effect, or maybe its the tiers of seats, or maybe its the old stadium messing up the wind patters or maybe this or that, but its all bullshit. Sure, its not exactly a good thing for the park to be playing the way it is, and you'd certainly like to see a little better on the first weekend, but its early, its a ridiclously small sample size, and when you look at the games objectively, all the runs scored isn't that obscene.
First and foremost one of the things that seems to be overlook is that such a high level of production is not unprecedented, even at the old yankee stadium. Sure, its never happened on an opening series for a stadium, but its not like this hasn't happened. Indeed, according to Elias Sports Bureau, there were eight four-game spans of 20 or more homers at the original Yankee Stadium, some of them overlapping: one in 2000, two in 2003, one in 2004 and four in 2007. The high of 26 was from July 31-Aug. 2, 2007. Two in one year! Did pundits start freaking out in 2003 screaming "oh my god this old stadium is falling apart its creating a wind tunnel, balls are flying out of here!" No, it didn't happen, you know why? Because its baseball, crazy shit happens sometimes, you get a few bad starts from your starting pitching, a reliever is overused that week or not feeling "it" and you throw them in there against a good lineup sometimes they can be absolutely awful. Just because it happened at the beginning of a season with a new stadium doesn't make it any more astounding.
The case that this was just one of those weekends is further cemeted when you look at the guys who were giving up the home runs. I went back and looked at all the guys giving up home runs and when see who did the damage its really not that hard to believe that they gave up a few dingers. For one Anthony Reyes, the leader in the clubhouse with 3 is a perticularly awful pticher who while in the National League, an inferior hitting league gave up at least 17 home runs with ERAs of at least 5.50ERA. Now you put that guy in a superior hitting league and against a very stacked lineup isn't it at least plausible he gives up three home runs in pretty much any park? As for the rest, Anthony Claggett, a guy who's never been been in the major league gave up two home runs and eight earned in his only outing, is not that suprising and I doubt we'll see him anytime soon. Jensen Lewis, while a good reliver, has given up 16 home runs in 83 innings career, with such an astoundingly high rate isn't it plausible he coughs up two over the course of a series? I could go on about pretty much every guy, including Edwar Ramirez, AJ Burnett, Fausto Carmona and the rest of them and when you look at their track records of giving up their share of bombs, and in fact at a irregularly high rate, isn't 20 home runs in a series pretty easy to see?
Who knows, maybe after a season or a half season it will be evident that there is a problem and something needs to be done about it, but right now consider me among the skeptics of this "crisis." Sure, it was a weekend of a lot of offense, and some of the home runs did look like they were a bit wind-aided, but this is hardly the first time a guy hit a home run that would've been a pop out anyother day. The bottom line is, you put two teams together who have very deep and power-laiden lineups, some iffy starting pitching at times and atrocious bullpens you're going to have a LOT of runs scored, its inevitable. Get back to me at the all-star break and we'll see how bad things are then, until then this was just one of those weekends.
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