Petco Park No Longer Just For Pitchers?

By John Hiatt | Oct 30, 2014

Petco Park! The home of our beloved San Diego Padres. Petco has been known for being a pitcher-friendly ballpark because of the fences being so far from home plate. Which usually causes a lot of hitters to “talk” about how Petco plays. However, over the past two years, the players have slowly but surely stopped talking about how big the ballpark plays.

The main reason for the talk going down is the fact that the Padres have done lots of research on how they can make their ballpark play more fair. The Padres Assistant General Manager Josh Stein says “I’m not hearing the fence talk at all” according to Corey Brock of MLB.com Stein was a big part in the studies and recommendations that went into the fence modifications at Petco.

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Here is the proof that Petco is playing more fair. A year after they moved in the fences at Petco, there was 21 “New Fence” home runs, in 2014 there were 16. That number represents 15.8 of the 101 home runs that were hit at the ballpark, which is down from the 146 home runs that were hit last season, which comes in at 14.4 percent.

The Padres had the fourth lowest earned run average coming in with a 3.27, which includes a 2.56 ERA at home, allowing only 47 home runs. However the Padres offense was the problem, scoring the fewest runs in baseball. The Friars only hit 54 home runs through 81 games last year.

Petco’s fence modifications entailed moving the right field fence in 11 feet from 402 feet to 391 feet, as well as 12 feet in center going from 402 feet to 390 feet, and the wall in right field was lowered to a little under 8 feet to match the rest of the outfield wall.

Will Petco continue to be a fair ballpark? It looks like it! But only time will tell.

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