DETROIT — Had he been speaking to a group of Detroit media members, Astros manager Dusty Baker’s post-game comment would have triggered alarms.
When asked to comment on Riley Greene’s 424-foot out, a blast that would have been a go-ahead, eighth-inning home run in 28 other parks, Baker said he heard the Tigers were going to bring the fences in this offseason.
Bally Sports Detroit analyst and Tigers’ icon Kirk Gibson said the same thing in a passing comment on the broadcast Monday.
Hold off on the alarms, for now, please. The Tigers have made no firm decision about moving fences in at Comerica Park. But it sure seems like it’s being studied.
Throughout the season we’ve seen non-baseball personnel roaming the outfield with measuring devices before games. We’ve seen manager AJ Hinch walking the outfield with Heather Nabozny, head groundskeeper. We’ve seen assistant general manager Sam Menzin on similar strolls.
We also know that two years ago, chairman and CEO Christopher Ilitch said in a press conference that the club was looking into making renovations to the stadium.
“That’s such a big topic,” Hinch said after the game Wednesday. “Especially around this ballpark and in the time that I’ve been in this organization. I haven’t really thought a lot about it.”
It’s also a topic outside of Hinch’s purview. It’s not a simple or inexpensive undertaking. If the dimensions at Comerica Park are modified and shortened, it will be done on the Ilitch’s timetable, with Ilitch-commissioned engineering studies and with Ilitch dollars.
But a game like Wednesday, when a potential game-winning homer gets swallowed up in the center field canyon, certainly brings the topic to the forefront.
Again.
Research done by MLB.com revealed Greene’s blast was the longest out by distance in the Major Leagues this season. Four of the five longest outs recorded since 2020 occurred at Comerica.
Statcast data shows that 26 of the 55 outs recorded on balls hit at least 410 feet have been hit by Tigers hitters since 2015.
None of this is news to anyone who has tried to make their living hitting homers at Comerica Park. Even after the fences in left field were moved in (2003), players like Victor Martinez and Nick Castellanos complained bitterly about the relative unfairness of the park.
Earlier this season, Robbie Grossman admitted that the park’s dimensions, coupled with the deader baseballs, had completely messed with his head at the plate, particularly when he was hitting left-handed.
Ironically, the player who has probably been hurt the most by the dimensions, Miguel Cabrera, has not complained much, at least not publicly — even though studies show the park has cost him close to 100 home runs over the years.
In the visitor’s clubhouse in Cleveland last month, I brought the topic up to Eric Haase, who grew up watching homers die in outfielder’s mitts at Comerica and has had his own 400-foot fly balls go unrewarded.
Tucker Barnhart listened in. As did rookies Greene and Kerry Carpenter.
“Just make it average,” Haase said. “Right now it’s leaps and bounds the most hitter-unfriendly park that there is. Just make it fair. You want to feel like you are rewarded.
“Even on the defensive side. When you don’t make a good pitch and a guy hits it 430 feet and it’s an out? You’re like, ‘OK, we got away with one there.’ I just want it to be fair.”
According to Statcast, Haase has had four homers taken away by the park’s dimensions. He has hit 88 balls with an exit velocity of 95 mph or better this year, 47 of those at Comerica. He has 16 extra base hits at home to show for that.
Which, as he said, is nothing compared to what it’s done to Cabrera’s numbers.
“It’s widely regarded that if he played in Cincinnati or New York or Philly, he would’ve been approaching 600 homers instead of 500 homers last year,” Haase said. “Since they’ve been tracking batted-ball data, that’s crazy to think about the numbers he’s put up in this park.”
Haase took it a step further. Cabrera won the Triple Crown in 2012 and by a lot of measures had a more productive offensive season in 2013. But he fell nine home runs and one RBI short of winning a second straight Triple Crown.
“If he’s playing in a different park, he shatters those numbers,” Haase said.
But here’s the other side of the argument. The Tigers are building this team around a core of young, talented pitchers. That’s been the focus of the rebuild — Matt Manning, Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal, Alex Faedo, etc.
It might seem counterintuitive to bring the fences in after using so many resources on pitching. But Haase said it doesn’t have to be that way.
“I don’t want it to be super hitter-friendly,” he said. “I don’t want it to be the complete opposite of what it is now. You just want to be rewarded for doing the hardest thing there is to do in sports.
“It’s tough to look at batted-ball data and play the imaginary, ‘Well, if I was in this park, I would be doing this and that.’ The reality is, you aren’t getting evaluated on expected slugging or park-adjusted numbers. It’s really tough.”
Think about this, too. Haase has been in professional baseball since 2011 and he’s still playing on the contract he signed out of Dearborn Divine Child High School. He’s not eligible for arbitration until 2024.
“They don’t pay you for exit velocity, they pay you for numbers,” he said. “You try to control everything you can, the process and all of that, and you go out there and do it and you don’t get rewarded for it. It’s frustrating.”
Haase was asked how he might alter the dimensions at Comerica Park.
“I guess, mostly right-center and left-center,” he said. “Left field plays decently true. By the visitors’ bullpen it starts to get a little deep. But you can handle part of the park being big. Center and right-center is by far the most hitter-unfriendly area.
“It’s not even triples alley anymore. Guys are just running balls down out there. You mash it 390-some feet in the gap and there’s a guy there. It’s not conducive to scoring runs.”
Haase, though he may have done so more eloquently and PG-rated than most, certainly isn’t the first player to express frustration about the ballpark. This story here is merely the latest in a 20-year list of stories damning in one way or another the spacious confines of Comerica Park.
But timing is everything.
If Ilitch and the Tigers are indeed contemplating altering the dimensions of the ballpark this winter, maybe Greene’s 424-foot out will provide the last nudge to get it off the study table and into action.
“I think it needs to happen,” Haase said.
