ESPN Buster Olney Blog

Sure, there are a handful of problems that need to be sorted out in Citi Field, the Mets' new ballpark. The visiting relievers can't really see the games from their bullpen in right-center field, and their video screen operates with a delay of about 15 seconds (by the count of the Brewers' relievers). There is little hot water and no music in the visiting clubhouse, and they need to squeegee out the whirlpool because of a drainage issue.

But those are minor details that can be ironed out eventually. The Yankees, on the other hand, might have a whopper of a problem on their hands that could have long-term, big-picture ramifications for them. Their new ballpark is playing like Coors Field East.

The Yankees totaled five homers Friday, and the Indians launched six Saturday. If you include the two exhibition games played against the Cubs the weekend before the season started, there have been 25 homers in five games, and already word has gotten around baseball about the acute hitting conditions at the new park in the Bronx. A number of rival executives wrote e-mails late Saturday indicating that they'd heard from their own scouts and other sources that new Yankee Stadium plays very, very differently than old Yankee Stadium.

And in the aftermath of the Indians' 22-run outburst, Yankees manager Joe Girardi and Indians manager Eric Wedge talked about the ballpark. From Mark Hale's piece:

Girardi: "It seems to be playing somewhat short. You don't see this many home runs usually. It's too early to tell, but the early indications are the balls are carrying to right field."
Wedge: "It definitely does fly [to right] here as compared to the old Stadium."

The Indians took advantage of the slump-ridden Chien-Ming Wang and his flat sinker Saturday; Wang has allowed 23 runs in six innings and has the Yankees scrambling to figure out how to fix him. And after Wang was replaced by rookie Anthony Claggett, Cleveland -- which is an excellent offensive team -- frolicked some more.

There will be days when it's the Yankees who take advantage of the conditions; this is what happened Friday, when Derek Jeter slammed a tiebreaking home run far over the right-field wall. Mark Teixeira might hit 50 homers this year if the ballpark continues to play as small as it has, and there will be a lot of fun high-scoring games for the home team. (This is where I channel Eric Karabell and Matthew Berry: If you are a fantasy player, you should immediately go out and overpay for Teixeira or A-Rod or Nick Swisher, the way you would've overpaid for Vinny Castilla and other Rockies in the '90s.)

But the Yankees' broader vision has always been based on pitching, and privately, club officials must be scared to death by what they are seeing in their new park, which seems to have an offense-happy mind of its own, like the Plymouth in the Stephen King thriller "Christine." If new Yankee Stadium is, in fact, a wind tunnel where two or three or four or more home runs are hit per game, the challenges for the front office just got even more complicated.

In the immediate future, they have to try to get Wang right. But if every high fly he allows falls over the fence, that will only reinforce the confidence problem he has. As they incorporate the young pitching they have been developing -- guys like Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes, who is off to a good start in Triple-A -- that process could be affected in the same way it has been for young pitchers in Colorado, Texas, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, etc., organizations that inhabit ballparks that play small.

And if the home runs continue to fly out of Yankee Stadium and pitchers' ERAs climb over 5.00, they could have as difficult a challenge in luring free-agent hurlers as the Rockies, Rangers, Reds, Phillies and Astros have had through the years. "Nobody will want to go to pitch there if it's a bandbox," one veteran Brewer said yesterday, musing about the conditions.

Meanwhile, over at Citi Field on Saturday, J.J. Hardy blistered a fourth-inning pitch from Johan Santana toward left-center field -- a long drive that, in Milwaukee, probably would've landed near the Pfister Hotel downtown. But Citi Field is enormous between right-center and left-center, like a hybrid of Petco Park and the Giants' home field, as one Padre described it to a Mets compatriot earlier this week. Beltran raced back, slowed in front of the left-center-field wall and caught the ball on the front edge of the warning track.

After some visiting players saw the park recently, they predicted that Mets hitters will soon have some unflattering things to say about the dimensions. Milwaukee left fielder Ryan Braun is awed by the dimensions.

The Yankees would love to have those kinds of issues now.

But first, the Bombers have to figure out what to do with Wang, writes Wallace Matthews.

The Yankees could use an off day to buy time for a decision on Wang, writes Tyler Kepner.

They had their worst inning in franchise history, writes Anthony McCarron.

Claggett won't forget his debut, writes John Jeansonne.

Ben Francisco figures he's never been part of an inning like that, Paul Hoynes writes.

Citi Field fails to showcase the Mets' history, writes Mike Vaccaro.