Colorado Rockies: What are the keys to winning at altitude?

For the 24 years Major League Baseball has had a home in Denver, Colorado, casual fans, sports writers, analysts, players, and managers have all talked about the thin air of the Mile High City. They have all talked about the flight of the baseball, and the 9% further distance balls travel at Coors Field.

What they haven’t talked about, until recently anyway, are Coors Field’s playing surface field dimensions. On March 26, 2014 Cork Gaines, a Contributor for Business Insider brought up an interesting point when he started putting together a chart of Major League Baseball Stadium Field Dimensions. In his study, he found Coors Field to have the largest playing surface among ballparks in Major League Baseball. This forces the Outfield Defense Players to where out sooner, as they are forced to cover more ground than the average park.

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In fact, his findings showed us just how much larger … try 0.18 ACRES larger than the average major league ballpark, and 0.33 acres larger than Fenway Park, which has the smallest playing surface of Major League Baseball stadiums. To put this into contrast, Coors Field, at 0.18 acres larger than the average field, forces players to cover 7,840 more square feet of surface space – making leg, hamstring, calf, and groin injuries more frequent

This creates more bloop singles, doubles, and triples, adding base runners to the home runs the thin air contributes to. Solo home runs are just that, a single run. Add in a couple of baserunners and you turn a 1-0 lead into a three-run deficit. Mix that in three innings, and you find yourself giving up nine runs off three simple mistakes.