Yup, Mets have made it official:
From the New York Times site:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/sport ... field.html
By ANDREW KEH
Published: October 31, 2011
Three seasons after the Mets opened Citi Field, they are making significant alterations, lowering walls and bringing in fences in an attempt to make it easier to hit home runs, and perhaps allow David Wright to regain his equilibrium as a player.
The walls will be uniformly lowered to eight feet, with a new wall of that height being placed in front of the current 15-foot wall in left field, which some people have come to call the Great Wall of Flushing. About 100 seats will be placed in the gap between the walls in a design that would seem to mimic the several rows of seats that now sit atop the Green Monster in left field in Fenway Park.
In right-center field, the fences will be moved in so the distance from home plate will be 398 feet instead of 415. And in right field, the gimmicky Mo Zone cutout will be eliminated, which will shorten the distance there to 375 feet. A picnic area will go in the area no longer in play.
The Mets announced the changes at a news conference at noon Monday at Citi Field, although it had been clear for some time that General Manager Sandy Alderson, after one season in Flushing, had concluded that the outfield was too big and too intimidating to the team’s own hitters over the course of 81 home games a season.
In his remarks Monday Alderson said that he agreed with the notion that visiting players were not as adversely affected by the dimensions because they would swing away for several games, then depart.
On the other hand, Alderson said, Mets hitters had to deal with the issue day after day. He played down the idea that the alterations were being done for the specific benefit of any Mets hitters, but two of them — Wright and Jason Bay — are not the consistent power hitters they were before dealing with Citi Field on a regular basis.
Wright, whose numbers had been among the most consistent in baseball, has seen his strikeout totals soar and his batting average and home run numbers gyrate since Citi Field opened.
He has tried not to point a finger at Citi Field’s dimensions, and particularly at the big left-field wall, but there have been moments when he let down his guard and made it clear that he was frustrated by the stadium’s size.
Bay, a right-handed hitter like Wright, has barely been the power hitter he was before the Mets signed him to a lavish four-year deal before the 2010 season. He, too, has tried not to use Citi Field’s dimensions as an excuse; he, like Wright, can probably only benefit from the alterations the Mets are planning.
The Mets said construction would begin next month and last from six to eight weeks. No price tag was set, although Jeff Wilpon, the team’s chief operating officer, said that the team had originally budgeted $800 million to build Citi Field and that the cost of the alterations would fit into that original estimate.
Wilpon also maintained that the original impetus to design such a big playing field came from the previous Mets regime headed by Omar Minaya, who was the general manager from the 2005 season through 2010, when he was dismissed. He said the decision to make the changes came from Alderson.