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Garrett Mitchell
Garrett Mitchell
Later this week the Brewers will make their final trip west during the 2022 season. It’s a big trip in the standings, and it’s also a trip that will take them to some of the sport’s largest stadiums.
The Brewers have just 13 road games left this season, but they’ll knock seven of them out in seven days starting on Thursday, when they head to Arizona for four games and continue to Colorado for three more. The two opponents on this trip have a pair of things in common: First, they’re both all but eliminated from postseason contention. They’re two of just a handful of teams in the sport that are more than 30 games back in their division, and they’re both more than ten games back of the National League’s final Wild Card spot.
The other thing they have in common is somewhat less noticeable, but it adds an interesting wrinkle to this trip: When it comes to field dimensions, the Diamondbacks and Rockies play in two of MLB’s largest ballparks.
The trip begins with four games at Chase Field in Phoenix, the third-largest playing surface in the majors. Arizona’s large outfield is extra difficult for defenders, however, because of the shape of the facility itself. The wall in center field is 25 feet high and while its 407-foot distance isn’t all that unusual, the park actually gets deeper to the left and right of dead center, reaching 413 feet.
Unusual Angles
That combination of deep and tall fences and unusual angles makes Chase Field one of the best places in baseball to hit for extra bases. Games at Chase Field feature about 16% more doubles and 19% more triples than games featuring the same players at neutral facilities (per Baseball Savant’s park factors). The run environment at the park ends up being close to neutral overall, but a team’s ability to succeed in that facility may depend on its outfielders’ ability to run down balls in the gaps.
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In Denver, meanwhile, Coors Field is famous for being a favorable place to hit home runs. Denver’s high elevation and dry conditions lead to a favorable environment for launching baseballs, although the effect has been tempered a bit in recent years by storing baseballs in a humidor at the ballpark (a change which has since been implemented in all 30 MLB parks). Games played at Coors Field feature about 12% more home runs than the average ballpark, but that’s not the ballpark’s only impact on offense.
In addition to Denver’s atmospheric factors, Coors Field also features the sport’s largest outfield. The playing surface at Coors covers 121,486 square feet, about 10,000 more than the MLB average (American Family Field covers 111,619 square feet, slightly back of the middle of the pack). This extra space creates additional challenges for visiting outfielders: Coors Field isn’t just a homer-friendly ballpark: It also gives up 14% more singles, 17% more doubles and 100% more triples than the average facility.
Playing in these two facilities back-to-back will leave the Brewers with some interesting strategic decisions to make, both in terms of roster and lineup construction. The Brewers will already be spending at least some of the road trip without one of their top outfield defenders: Jonathan Davis, who Statcast measured at four runs above average in the outfield this season despite the fact that he’s logged just a handful of games out there, won’t be eligible to come off of the injured list until sometime during the Rockies series at the earliest. With Davis on the shelf, the Brewers’ only above-average defensive outfielder is Tyrone Taylor (+2 runs across 90 games in the outfield).
If the Brewers want to put their best defensive foot forward for these games, however, they might consider a lineup with both Taylor and recent callup Garrett Mitchell, one of the top defensive outfielders in the organization. It’s tougher to quantify minor leaguers’ defensive skills, but MLB Pipeline assigned Mitchell “60” grades (well above average) for his fielding and throwing arm and a “70” grade for his speed (elite).In recent weeks a lot has been made of the Brewers’ struggles on offense. Upcoming games against the struggling Diamondbacks and Rockies could go a long way to get their bats back on track, but they might also be well served to consider maximizing their defense and taking some pressure off the offense in two of baseball’s tougher places to play in the outfield.
