Off Topic
July 21, 2055
Sacramento GM Ron Collins is sitting at his desk in a fugue state, like he often is these days, when Kenjio Hall, a young math major from Cal State knocks on the doorway.
“Wha—” Collins says, the settles down, his heart racing.
“Sorry to disturb you?” the young man says. “But I thought you might want to see something I’ve been working on.
“I’m sure I do,” Collins replies. He’s happy to have someone to talk with, and it’s made even better by the fact that is seems his assistant, Carlos Camacho, is nowhere to be found. IT’s hard to concentrate when Camacho is around, he’s found. “Come on in and show me what you’ve got.”
“It’s about the ballpark, sir,” Hall says, settling in and connecting his palm0sizxed memory device into the desktop projects in Collins’s desk. Tables of figures appear in the void above the tabletop. “It appears that the Basilica is hurting our hitters a lot more than it’s helping our pitchers.”
The kid leads Collins through a set of figures as dense as Collins’s brain. Things that include:
| OBP | Road | Home | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAC Hitters | 0.350 | 0.320 | -0.030 |
| Opponents | 0.311 | 0.279 | -0.032 |
| SLG | Road | Home | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAC Hitters | 0.409 | 0.361 | -0.048 |
| Opponents | 0.391 | 0.366 | -0.025 |
There was a time when Collins’s brain could handle these kinds of things. A time when things were sharper and clearer. He knows this is true. But ever since coming here to Sacramento, his gray matter feels about as useful as a bucket of pimento cheese.
“You’re saying we need to hit more home runs?”
“Or doubles and triples.”
“But the team won a championship in this park just two seasons ago. What’s so different?
“That’s right, Boss,” Kenjio Hall says. “But this team’s offense is really, really not the same. Here. Take a look. I’ve run some projections.”
He projects more tables dense with data:
| Team | W | PCT | AVG | HR | R | AB | H | 2B | 3B | BB | K | OBP | SLG | OPS | SB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This year | 95 | 0.588 | 0.289 | 63 | 615 | 5080 | 1428 | 230 | 35 | 353 | 722 | 0.337 | 0.388 | 0.725 | 112 |
| Champs | 104 | 0.291 | 86 | 792 | 1677 | 303 | 58 | 468 | 824 | 0.345 | 0.409 | 0.753 | 172 |
“I see,” Collins says. His mind is coming around. It feels good. For the first time in weeks he feels like he’s connecting the dots. “It’s not so much that the ballpark is killing us as it is the team is not really fit into it now?”
“That’s the other way of looking at it. Based on runs scored, the Mad Popes of 2055 project to win 95. But if we were playing all our games on the road, that projections raises to as high as 105.”
“That’s quite a gap,” Collins says, bewildered. Yes. It’s coming back. Slowly. "That's what the team won as a championship club."
“The park is a pretty big factor, though,” Hall adds with a note of finality. “It’s hard to get an offense that really plays well in it. The '53 team hit didn't hit for that much power, but it did hit 30% more homers than we're projected to this year. And look at the doubles and triples. Seventy and twenty more.”
"Wow."
"That team could drive the ball. Their BABIP was .328."
"What's ours now?"
"You don't wanna know."
"Yes. I do."
"Three seventeen."
"An eleven-point drop?"
"Yes, sir. two hundred fifty more hits. A hundred ten more walks."
"Sixty more steals," Collins added, setting back in his seat and seeing things clearly now. Wondering. What if they changed a few things? Went to a weird configuration in the fences? Moved a few in? Or adjusted the foul grounds? Maybe looked into some new turf brands? Could he adjust the park and help the team? He looked at the kid. He liked him already.
“Thanks, Knejio, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. I’ll definitely take it under consideration.”
With that, the meeting was over. The kid left the office, and Collins stood to stroll to the big bay window that opened out onto the view of right field and center. He looked critically at those long, long fences, and took in the tiny hitting background that had been painted into the distance in center.
“Hmm…” he said to himself. “Hmm…”
