Detroit Tigers may be mulling over bringing the fences in at Comerica Park

Detroit Tigers may finally move the walls in at Comerica Park.

As the Detroit Tigers ponder more changes that need to be made, one of those things could be the moving in of the outfield walls to shorten up the fences in Comerica Park. It’s something that has been kicked around in the past and has started getting some more traction.

For the Detroit Tigers, it’s a discussion that has yet to amount to any concrete changes but is a decision that could ultimately start gaining some traction soon. It’s not insane to think that a change could be coming.

According to Seamheads dot com, the Tigers ballpark is 370 feet to the left field alley, 398 feet to left center, 420 feet to dead center, 403 to right center, and 356 to the right field alley. Tigers fans know that the LCF and RCF gaps can be cavernous at times.

After all, Nick Castellanos once said, “this park’s a joke,” about the way that it plays large and is so cruel to hitters at times. The fences were actually farther out in left field, being 395 feet to the left field alley.

The Juan Gonzalez trade and eventual bargaining really got the ball rolling on moving in the fences. Now, some 20 years later, things appear to be heading in that direction once again. In the recent mailbag on The Athletic ($$) with Tigers beat writer Cody Stavenhagen, someone asked about the possibility of the fence being moved in.

He mentions that this could happen and teases the idea of this happening, saying this, “I swear we saw team officials wandering around in the outfield measuring things multiple times this past season.”

Nothing is for certain, but it very well could happen. The Tigers may opt to try and improve the power numbers in the ballpark. They certainly are in the trenches right now. Using Statcast’s HR-xHR numbers, it helps paint a bigger picture. (xHR is the number of ballparks the home run was gone at/30)

In 2022, Javier Báez hit 17 homers for the Tigers with an xHR total of 21.7, leaving him 4.7 shy of the total he should have had. In fact, every single Tigers hitter was in the negative or under 1.0 positive.

This implies that every Tigers hitter lost home runs due to Comerica Park or was not able to gain any from the ballpark. I started looking at this for 2021 and found the same thing to be true. In 2020, JaCoby Jones was at 1.0 for his HR-xHR, which was the first time any Tigers hitter had benefitted a full home run in their xHR.

With the last two seasons leaving room for improvement and the hope that the offense can get into gear, there’s reason to think that this long-lasting debate could be heating up once again. It’s something that’s been gaining traction as the 2022 season came to an end and the offseason has begun.

With Stavenhagen dropping a little nugget about team officials exploring some options. It seems like the fences may be coming in at Comerica. After all, it might be nice to see hitters getting a couple of extra long balls and getting rewarded for a good piece of hitting.

It might finally be time to bring the fences in (again) at Comerica Park.