Yankee Stadium Too Small to Contain Long Balls

Home runs have been flying out of the new Yankee Stadium, and the weather isn't to blame, writes Tim Buckley of AccuWeather.com. The team says the new park has the same dimensions as the old digs, but the right field wall is actually up to 9 feet closer to home plate in some places, and 2 feet shorter. Buckley's study revealed that 20 of the park's 105 homers can be attributed to that shorter porch.

The stadium is on pace for 293 home runs this year, just shy of the record 303 belted out of Coors Field in 1999. You could thank the shorter right porch for 56 of those. There’s been no consistent weather pattern that would increase home runs, Buckley concludes. “Any weather-related changes would seem to be due to differences between the old and new Yankee Stadiums and their effects on the micro-weather regimes.” (More Yankee Stadium stories.)