Baltimore Orioles Players Can't Hide Their Excitement About New Left Field Wall

The Baltimore Orioles are giving Camden Yards another facelift.

The left field wall - a point of contention for pitchers and hitters for different reasons - is undergoing another change to its dimensions.

From 1992-2021, this was considered a hitter's friendly ballpark. Lineups, home and away, were teeing off on pitching staffs with an MLB-most 1,140 home runs blasted from 2017-21.

Knowing something needed to change, the Orioles made adjustments to the left field wall that was one of the shortest porches in the sport, pushing things back 30 feet in spots.

That took care of the home run problems, but it also directly hurt Baltimore's hitters.

Per Jake Rill of MLB.com, 72 homers were lost over the past three seasons with the new dimensions, and nobody was impacted more negatively than Ryan Mountcastle who lost 11 of those.

The Orioles knew they overcorrected things, and now with a Goldilocks approach, they're looking to find a happy medium by pulling in the left field wall by nine to 20 feet at some points.

And the hitters are having a hard time hiding their excitement about it.

"Excited," Mountcastle said with a smile on his face per Roch Kubatko of MASN. "It's pretty cool. It was way back there. For them to finally move it back in, just happy to see what it looks like. It's a good feeling knowing that you can pull the ball again and get good results out of it. Hopefully I can, and we'll see what happens."

In 2021, the slugger looked like he was going to be one of the best power-hitters in the game.

He bashed 33 homers and had a home run percentage of 5.6%, a staggering number for someone who only had 35 Major League games and 140 plate appearances under his belt before then.

But, his numbers steadily started to decline when the wall was moved back, producing 22 blasts in 2022, 18 in 2023 and just 13 this past season.

It's easy to see why Mountcastle is excited, but he's not the only one who shares that sentiment.

"I mean, I'm not disappointed," Adley Rutschman said. "It's definitely nice as a righty, and maybe as a lefty. I think everyone's excited."

Jordan Westburg echoed those sentiments.

"I was happy. I know it took a lot of homers away from some of us righties, and I immediately thought about lefties, too, like Jackson (Holliday), Gunnar (Henderson), (Colton) Cowser, Heston (Kjerstad). All those dudes use the opposite field so well. It's gonna immediately benefit those guys, too, so I'm pumped for it," he said per Kubatko.

Of course, opposing teams will also benefit from the dimension change.

While the Orioles lost 72 home runs from 2022-24, their opponents lost 65 of their own.

There's no perfect solution when it comes to having a ballpark that benefits just the home team, but considering Baltimore has to play 81 games at Camden Yards, these adjustments should help them the most with their core group of players set to suit up for the foreseeable future.

Recommended Articles