Following the Mets the last few years, it is easy to spot out the weakness that both Santana and Perez share (for Santana its his only weakness, for Perez its one of a bunch) and that is the homerun ball. (As a side note, the other big weakness for Perez is his inability to stop the bleeding). That is why I am interested to see how their numbers will look at home this year. About a month ago, I was reading on another site, and if I can find the article, I will link to it later, that Citi is not going to play like Shea at all because at almost every part of the ballpark, the outfield wall, in reality, is deeper than Shea. In other words, in designing a pitcher's park, the Mets might have gone over board. The biggest example of this is the left field wall where not only is it very tall, but its also almost the same distance out ther that Shea was.
What this means is that homer totals will dip way down, and both Santana and Perez tend to be flyout pitchers (for Santana, take that with a grain of salt because he is also a strikeout pitcher). This means that the two of them, at home, could really have a legitamate home field advantage. This is also another reason why the Mets should not be going after Manny who cannot really field. The Mets are going to have so much real estate in the OF that they will need the defense out there to be strong to prevent fast players from turning singles into doubles, doubles into triples and so on.
Going on this homer dead zone topic more, this is the other reason not to sign Manny because the Mets are going to need more contact hitters. This ballpark looks to play old time, small ball baseball. Personally, I am glad about that because Reyes is fast, Wright gets a lot of doubles, and Beltran plays simiarly. This is also why we need to get rid of Castillo, because speed will really be important this year.
