New Busch Stadium; same Harold Reynolds
Ben Godar
Yesterday was a good day to be a Cardinals fan. The new ballpark opened with a who’s who of legendary players: Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Willie McGee.
But the big question with any new ballpark is, how will it play? We probably won’t really know until at least the All-Star break, but that didn’t stop Baseball Tonight’s Harold Reynolds from making some bonehead predictions.
When designing Busch III, the Cardinals brass decided they wanted a park that played similar to the old park, and if anything skewing toward pitcher-friendly. The fences are slightly deeper everywhere but dead center, and a whopping 18 feet deeper in the power alleys. In other words, this stadium wasn’t designed to be one of these mini-golf parks like in Houston and Cincinnati.
But after exactly one game in the new digs, Harold Reynolds declared that the new park would favor hitters. As with most claims made by the ex-jock panel, HR’s were based on nothing more than the assumption that as a former player he has an innate sense of everything that will happen in The Game.
Reynolds reached further into his own ass to pull out the idea that "they have a lot of fly ball pitchers on that team." The Cardinals? Does this guy watch baseball?
So I thought I’d introduce some research into this flood of ignorance. If you look at ground ball/fly ball ratios, everyone in the St. Louis rotation ranks in the top 20 among starting pitchers. That shouldn’t be surprising, given the team led the league in double plays last season. So no, Harold, the Cardinals do not have a lot of fly ball pitchers. They have the most extreme ground ball staff around.
Nobody is certain how the new Busch Stadium is going to play. But based on the information we do have, it seems likely to play neutral or pitcher-friendly. And based on the lack of information coming from Harold Reynolds, it seems clear he is an idiot.
Yesterday was a good day to be a Cardinals fan. The new ballpark opened with a who’s who of legendary players: Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Willie McGee.
But the big question with any new ballpark is, how will it play? We probably won’t really know until at least the All-Star break, but that didn’t stop Baseball Tonight’s Harold Reynolds from making some bonehead predictions.
When designing Busch III, the Cardinals brass decided they wanted a park that played similar to the old park, and if anything skewing toward pitcher-friendly. The fences are slightly deeper everywhere but dead center, and a whopping 18 feet deeper in the power alleys. In other words, this stadium wasn’t designed to be one of these mini-golf parks like in Houston and Cincinnati.
But after exactly one game in the new digs, Harold Reynolds declared that the new park would favor hitters. As with most claims made by the ex-jock panel, HR’s were based on nothing more than the assumption that as a former player he has an innate sense of everything that will happen in The Game.
Reynolds reached further into his own ass to pull out the idea that "they have a lot of fly ball pitchers on that team." The Cardinals? Does this guy watch baseball?
So I thought I’d introduce some research into this flood of ignorance. If you look at ground ball/fly ball ratios, everyone in the St. Louis rotation ranks in the top 20 among starting pitchers. That shouldn’t be surprising, given the team led the league in double plays last season. So no, Harold, the Cardinals do not have a lot of fly ball pitchers. They have the most extreme ground ball staff around.
Nobody is certain how the new Busch Stadium is going to play. But based on the information we do have, it seems likely to play neutral or pitcher-friendly. And based on the lack of information coming from Harold Reynolds, it seems clear he is an idiot.
posted by Ben Godar at 10:13 AM
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