Yesterday's post about Citi Field versus Shea Stadium got me thinking about homerun parks versus hitter's parks and what kind of correlation exists from one to the other. Unfortunately, my high-level math skills are, much like the clutch hitter, virtually non-existent. I barely know what a regression analysis is let alone how to run one, so if anyone out there wants to do the dirty work and report back here, we'd all be much obliged.

Anyway, the best I can offer is a relative +/- list of all big league parks in terms of run scoring versus homerun hitting. I took those park factors, courtesy of ESPN.com, and calculated the raw difference and percentage difference between runs and homeruns. For ESPN's park factors, a factor of 1.000 is neutral and a delta of 0 means the park is exactly as conducive to run scoring as to homerun hitting. The higher the delta (and delta %) the more prone the ballpark is to allowing runs versus homeruns. The lower the delta (and delta %) the more prone the ballpark is to allowing homeruns versus runs.

Fenway Park was the fifth-best park in which to score runs last season but the fifth-worst park out of which to hit homeruns. Shea was the fifth-worst run-scoring park but the ninth-best homerun park, the latter of which is a little bit surprising. Camden Yards was slightly above average for runs scored but was the most homerun-friendly park in baseball. Petco Park was the toughest place to score any type of run, homerun or otherwise.

Just a quick note of thanks to everyone who stopped by yesterday -- many for the first time -- and to all of the fine people who linked to yesterday's interview with Greg Rybarczyk of Hit Tracker. More than 5,000 people visited Amazin' Avenue on Wednesday, which I believe is our best day ever.

If you'll indulge me, here are the folks who saw fit to send their readers here:

Rob Neyer, Baseball Think Factory, The Hardball Times, MetsBlog, Roto Authority, Beyond the Boxscore, Ball Hype, NY Sports Day, Big Blue Interactive, Baseball Manager, Baseball Fever, Project Covo, NeoGAF.

Thank you all, and thanks to all of the existing members of our community for making this so much fun to be a part of.

Citi Field opens for real in three months, but I feel like we still know very little about it aside from its aesthetics. Dimensionally, we know it'll sport a similar configuration to Shea Stadium, with some variably higher walls and the odd geometric nuance to break from straight symmetry. Ted Berg took a crack at predicting the field's playability following a December press tour of the facility, and his best guess was basically the same as mine.

As it happens, I was thumbing through my Hardball Times Annual 2009 on Monday and took to reading an article by Greg Rybarczyk of Hit Tracker, the primary gist of which was to recap the 2008 season with respect to the homeruns that were hit. Tucked away at the tail end of the article was a bit about Citi Field, which I'll excerpt below:

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.

*snip*

Johan Santana and the rest of the Mets pitching staff will like the new park, but the Mets' front office should sign their power hitters now, before the word gets out. In spring 2009, baseball fans are going to get a live demonstration of what happens when a team sets out to design a pitcher's park, and overdoes it.

This came as news to me, so I shot Greg an email to see what was up. What follows is our exchange, which I think provides a strong basis for what we can expect out of Citi Field this season.

(click to enlarge)

Eric Simon: For starters, what makes Citi Field a "Grand Canyon" where Shea Stadium was merely a decent pitcher's park? The park dimensions are nearly identical, with Shea actually slightly deeper in many cases.

Greg Rybarczyk: 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.

Now, there could be some change in the wind patterns that makes Citi Field more favorable than Shea, as Shea was open in center field and frequently had wind coming in, while CF is more sheltered. We'll have to see how that turns out, but I haven't seen any convincing evidence that the wind will be more or less favorable in CF than it was in Shea. A few people have stated what the wind was doing on a particular day in November when they got inside Citi Field, in the particular spot they were standing in, but that's not much to hang one's hat on.

ES: What would account for the discrepancy in advertised versus actual Shea dimensions? Do similar disparities exist throughout the league? I gather that Mets ownership was hoping to build a stadium that played like Shea, though perhaps slightly more favorable to pitchers. Do you suspect that they were aware of the Shea dimensional disparity before designing Citi Field as they have, or do you think they've merely underestimated the effect these changes will have on homeruns?

GR: One thing about "published" dimensions: I don't think there is any accepted standard of where exactly you ought to measure to to come up with your "RF" number, or your "RCF" number, etc. So it is quite possible to use very different numbers and still technically both could be right. You also see (on older parks) changes in fence or home plate position that can make a number change (or an actual dimension change without the number on the fence padding being changed.) You also see some numbers that are just downright wrong, like the 434 sign in deep LCF at Dolphins Stadium (which should say 427 or so). Who knows why they leave that the way it is. Also, there was a story written a couple years back about RFK Stadium being mis-marked, which happened as a result of some wall pads being switched inadvertently.

I don't suspect that anyone is deliberately misleading anyone about the dimensions at Citi Field; I think it is more likely that they set out to design a pitcher's park, and they didn't ever get a truly accurate reading of the Shea Stadium dimensions (which is understandable since it is a smoothly curved fence for the most part), and if/when they realized they were deeper than Shea, they probably thought a few feet of distance, or a few feet of wall height, was no big deal. I guarantee that no one could have told you what percentage of homers clear the fence by 10 feet or less before I came along, and therefore everyone would underestimate the significance of being 5-10 feet deeper in most of the field.

ES: You're absolutely right about that. I would probably have guessed that an extra ten feet in outfield wall depth would decrease homerun output by 5% or 10%. If we assume that Citi Field suppressed homeruns as much as you predict it will, how long before the Mets move the walls in to compensate, if ever? Finally, given all of this, what kind of odds would you give Johan Santana to win the Cy Young award in 2009?

GR: Well, it took the Tigers five years to reconfigure Comerica Park after they built that enormous field, but they had some obvious options - originally their bullpens were in a "cutout" in RF, so it was easy to move them to LF and fill in with seats. I'm not sure I see great options like that for Citi Field - if they fill in the "well" in RF, they lose their RF overhang, which I think is one of the signature design elements of the park. Maybe they could add a few rows in LF and bring the fence height there down at the same time - this would be my vote for most likely change to swing the pendulum back towards neutral. I hope they do that instead of a field level picnic area like they did in Miller Park in RF, and in U.S. Cellular Field in RF.

I think the odds of Johan winning the Cy Young are pretty good, actually. Of course he's got to pitch well, but the field is going to help him and help the relievers that try to keep his inherited runners from scoring, and the relievers who try to close out the game in the 9th. Since the Mets have a great CF in Beltran, they will never be worse than even with an opponent in terms of covering the huge outfield, so there's another plus for the Mets. I think scoring may not necessarily be that much lower, also, due to the certain increase in triples, and most likely in other non-homer hits as well due to the bigger field. Homers will be way down, but I see Jose Reyes liking the deep RCF alley, he will certainly rack up some triples and maybe some ITP homers as well.

To see more of Greg's work and learn about how he measures homerun data, head on over to Hit Tracker.

Andy Pettitte has turned down the Yankees' one-year, $10 million offer. It's not clear what he's looking for, but might he be worth a one-year deal for, say, $12 million? Or, is he even worth $10 million?

His WHIP the past three seasons:

2006: 1.437
2007: 1.426
2008: 1.412

His tRA+ the past three seasons:

2006: 107
2007: 107
2008: 108

His tRA* the past three seasons:

2006: 4.59
2007: 4.83
2008: 4.46

Meh.

Whatever. Philadelphia reliever JC Romero was suspended for 50 games for "negligence", which so far as I can recall is not one of the banned substances agreed upon in the current collective bargaining agreement. Actually, the name of the substance Romero was found guilty of using has not been released, and there is plenty of confusion about its legality and who was actually aware of it.

The MLBPA sent the following letter to its constituents on 11/21:

"We have previously told you there is no reason to believe a supplement bought at a U.S. based retail store could cause you to test positive under our Drug Program. That is no longer true. We have recently learned of three substances which can be bought over the counter at stores in the United States that will cause you to test positive."

The article linked above is a tad disjointed, so here is a timeline of the events in question.

7/??: Romero purchased said substance from this GNC in Cherry Hill, NJ
8/26: Romero was randomly selected for a drug test
9/19: Romero was randomly tested again
9/23: MLBPA notified Romero that his 8/26 test came up positive
9/24: Romero (allegedly) ceased taking all supplements
10/1: Romero was tested yet again, this time coming up negative; Playoffs begin
10/12: Romero was notified that his 9/19 test came up positive
10/22: Positive result arbitration hearing held in Tampa; Romero shows supplement container with no warning label; World Series begins
10/27: Phillies win World Series
11/21: MLBPA sends letter to its players retracting early claim that three previously-cleared supplements would actually result in a positive test for banned substances
12/??: Arbitrator rules against Romero
1/4: Arbitration ruling confirmed
1/6: 50-game suspension officially announced

It seems if anyone should be held for negligence it's the MLBPA, which clearly provided questionable guidance to its players with respect to these three supplements. One would think, given the penalties being handed out, that the MLBPA would urge its players to err on the side of caution and avoid anything even remotely suspicious. No poppy seed bagels, no hemp clothing, nothing.

If it's any consolation, even if you can argue that Romero should have been in the clear this time around, I'm just going to assume that he has used PEDs at some point because I categorically assume that of every ballplayer. The reality is that from a probability standpoint, it'll be an accurate assumption some 90% of the time (I'm guessing). One important question resounds: Does it even matter? It has become patently obvious even to the piously ignorant that PED use has been rampant in baseball for at least twenty years and probably more like forty (or more), and that most every ballplayer has succumbed to the temptation of greatness or fortune or both and downed some greenies or plunged Winstrol into his ass (and possibly his teammate's ass, too).

If five percent of ballplayers used performance enhancers then we could rightly defame them as an immoral minority. We know that isn't the case, though. Juicing has been the rule, not the exception to it, and since there were no edicts until recently that prohibited their use let alone enforcement of same, I'm ready to turn the page and move on. The dark cloud of drug use means nothing to me anymore because it hangs over everyone, with few exceptions. I will judge this era's ballplayers to be on equal footing, which means Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens et all will be evaluated as ballplayers on their merits alone; their relative values as human beings irrespective of drug use is another story entirely.

Apologies for the tangent.

Back in November, I ran this column on Mets batter VORP by decade. It generated some good debate and interesting dialogue, and prompted a similar list for pitchers. VORP for pitchers is a little wonky, so I'm going to use a different Baseball Prospectus metric called SNLVAR (summarized nicely by Marc Normandin here). In short, SNLVAR is especially useful because it neutralizes run support and adjusts for strength of opposing lineups, distilling a pitcher's seasonal performance down to "what he did" without having to worry about "who he did it against" and "what did his team give him to work with". SNLVAR doesn't make any adjustment for team defense that I'm aware of, and it is only calculated for starting pitchers, so John Franco et al will have to wait for another such reliever list.

While the Mets' offensive dominance (or semi-dominance) has only emerged in the past decade or so, their pitching pedigree goes all the way back to the sixties.

No one should be shocked that despite pitching just three seasons, Tom Seaver had the highest aggregate SNLVAR in the sixties by a comfortable margin. He notched individual marks of 6.5, 7.0 and 9.6, with the last coming in the Mets' miracle season of 1969. That same year, Jerry Koosman had a 9.0 and rookie Gary Gentry contributed an additional 6.0. Not surprisingly, the Mets led the National League in SNLVAR with 33.3.

Al Jackson led the Mets' staff in 1962 with 2.8 SNLVAR. Carl Willey did likewise in 1963 (3.9). Tracy Stallard, with whom I share a birthday in common, led in 1964 with 2.9, just slipping past Jack Fisher who led in 1965 (3.6) and 1966 (3.9). Seaver led in 1967 and 1969; Koosman narrowly edged him out with a 7.1 in 1968.

Seaver was the Mets' leader in SNLVAR in every season from 1970 thru 1975 excepting 1974, when John Matlack was the club's best pitcher (8.1). Koosman had a fine decade, but the seventies really belonged to Seaver, whose 63.9 SNLVAR with the Mets was more than the #3 thru #5 starters combined. Seaver was traded to the Reds midway through the 1977 season, and his combined SNLVAR from 1970-1979 was more than anyone else in baseball by quite a bit, besting Jim Palmer 81.6 to 71.6. What's more, his seven-plus years with the Mets were better than full decades from all but two big league pitchers: Palmer and Gaylord Perry.

In the eighties, glam rock bands like Mötley Crüe, Poison and Skid Row dominated the music scene while Dwight Gooden did likewise to opposing hitters. Gooden's 12.6 SNLVAR in 1985 is the second highest single-season mark in baseball history (Sandy Koufax had 13.5 in 1966), and his 38.0 SNLVAR from 1984-1989 was second in baseball to Orel Hershiser's 39.2. He was twelfth in baseball in SNLVAR for the entire decade despite only beginning his career in 1984. All-time Met greats Ron Darling and Sid Fernandez round out the top three.

The latter half of the top ten is comprised of Walt Terrell and his two-plus seasons with the Mets in the early eighties and four guys -- Ed Lynch, Rick Aguilera, Pat Zachry and Craig Swan -- who were only part-time starters.

The nineties Mets teams were mostly forgettable, but there are still some pretty good pitchers on this list. Bobby J. Jones was probably the last decent starting pitcher the Mets developed, assuming we don't count guys who wound up pitching elsewhere (e.g. Scott Kazmir) and those who haven't completely established themselves (e.g. Mike Pelfrey), which is really kind of pathetic when you think about it. Apart from Jones we get three carry-overs from the eighties list (Gooden, Fernandez and David Cone), we get the first three seasons of Rick Reed's solid career with the Mets, Bret Saberhagen's nice little sting (including his epic 143:13 K:BB ratio in 1994), and the first two seasons of Al Leiter's terrific run in Queens.

Those Mets fans who have leapt aboard in the past dozen years will recognize plenty of names here. Leiter cements his legacy as one of the Mets' five best starters with his stretch in the early aughts. Met Pariahs Tom Glavine and Steve Trachsel, starting and finishing their respective solid careers in the 2000's despite each leaving on a sour note. Johan Santana is #9 overall with just one season under his belt. Will Pedro Martinez or Oliver Perez return to climb this list?

Few surprises in the franchise top five, except maybe that Koosman eked ahead of Gooden. Seaver leads by a country mile here, and has the third most SNLVAR of any pitcher since 1967 (Roger Clemens, 152.6; Greg Maddux, 139.3). It's nice to see the big four from 1986 all represented here. Santana will be in the top twenty after 2009.

If Brandon Webb is the Zeus of big league groundball machines, Derek Lowe must be Hephaestus (or Apollo, if you wish), churning out a higher ratio of grounders to flies than any starting pitcher excepting Webb. Here are the top ten Machina Humus-Pila over the past four seasons among pitchers with at least 80 game starts.

Note that with the signing of A.J. Burnett the Yankees will have two of the game's most prolific groundball artists. More groundballs means fewer homeruns, more double-plays, and more opportunities for the defense to create outs. These are all good things.

Per Mets.com (and corroborated by the New York Times, the Mets have reportedly extended an offer to Derek Lowe for three years and $36 million.

The Times article mentions that Lowe was seeking a five-year, $90 million deal, so don't be surprised to see this one drag on a while. This isn't an especially strong offer from the Mets, so count on agent Scott Boras coming back with what lawyers like to call a "counteroffer" in the neighborhood of four years and $64 million. I can see this one settling in around 3/$45 with a vesting option or even 4/$60. Four guaranteed years is a lot for a pitcher who will be 36 this season, so an option of some sort would clearly be the preference for the Mets.

Marty Noble predicted the Mets would make offers to two of Lowe, Oliver Perez and possibly Randy Wolf this week.

After they patched a couple of gaping holes in their bullpen, the Mets turned their attention to the starting rotation and smart money had them targeting either Derek Lowe or incumbent Oliver Perez. At the time, both players were likely to sign deals in the $13-$17 million annual range, and factions had formed touting the merits of one versus the other. Lowe is the consistent groundball machine, and Perez the shaky kid with great stuff. Lowe has age and experience, Perez has youth and potential.

With the pool of potential suitors drying up and no team aside from the Yankees willing to commit big to anyone, the Mets may actually be in a position to sign Lowe and Perez. Perez and Pedro Martinez cost a combined $18 million in 2008, so why not go to $25 or $28 million to bring Perez back and replace Pedro with Lowe? Give Lowe three years and $45 million, Perez three (or even four) years and $39 million (or $52 million), and call it a day with the following rotation:

Johan Santana
Derek Lowe
Mike Pelfrey
Oliver Perez
John Maine

That group would be among the best in baseball, evenly balanced from left to right as well as groundball to flyball. It would be a young rotation with the exception of Lowe, and given health would stay intact for the next three years. In addition to the obvious on-field benefits of this pitching coup, signing both Lowe and Perez would do two other things.

1. While not quite going toe-to-toe with the Yankees, the Mets would show a willingness to spend when necessary as they move into their pricey new stadium and look to finally overcome the Phillies for NL East supremacy.
2. Perhaps as importantly, Fred Wilpon would quiet his critics who say that the $300 million his family lost in Madoff's Ponzi scheme must have some impact on the Mets' financial flexibility. Wilpon has claimed that they are entirely distinct entities, but money speaks louder than words and even a modest over-indulgence in the free agent market would go a long way towards quieting the collective fears over the Mets' fiscal viability.

The market has turned in the Mets' favor, and Omar Minaya should pounce on this.