The Case of the AT&T Park Bullpens

As we enter the final month of the baseball season, the A's are battling for a division title, while across the bay the Giants are just waiting to see how high their draft pick is going to be. Back when the two teams faced off in late May, they had near identical records.

During one of the games in Oakland, professional blowhard Jon Heyman bemoaned the fact that he had to watch the game in the sewage-filled Oakland Coliseum, when just a few miles away pristine AT&T Park sat empty. This offended some of the A's fans and players, and prompted A's reliever Sean Doolittle to bring up a popular local urban legend: the reason the Giants' bullpens are on the field is because they forgot about them when they were building the stadium. This remark then caused Giants blogger extraordinaire, Grant Brisbee, to respond with this piece, which claims that the Giants did not in fact forget, and that they purposely put the bullpens on the field to give it an old-timey charm. After all, Wrigley's bullpens are on the field too! He then cites a some Giants officials giving this story, because clearly they would be impartial and tell you they fucked up if they did.

Let's compare Wrigley and AT&T.

First, here's AT&T:

The bullpens are down the lines, with basically no room between the foul line and the mound.

Now here's Wrigley:

As you can see, the bullpens are also down the lines, but there is a little more room between the mound and foul line. In fact, there's enough room that the relievers can actually sit in the bullpen.

In AT&T, however, the relievers sit in the dugout with the rest of the team, and have to walk from the dugout to the bullpen to warmup. Just like I did in little league (although I was the catcher more than the pitcher. Insert gay joke here). To my knowledge, it is the only park where that is the case.

One of the 1000+ comments on the post mentions that the original plans showed the jumbotron in right field with the bullpens off the field, in center and left. The bullpens were then moved to the field when they decided to move the jumbotron to center field. The problem with moving the bullpens onto the field is that there really isn't enough room for them. I imagine that when they decided to move the jumbotron, the bullpens were relocated to the field not to give the stadium an old-timey feel, but because they really didn't fit anywhere else. And while technically the mounds fit on the sidelines, it is clearly not a good place for them. There's a reason why no other new ballpark has the bullpen on the field.* They look like an afterthought, and I suspect they were.

So did they forget the bullpens when they were building AT&T Park? No, I doubt it. But I can see why you'd think that.

*A few geniuses pointed out that the Oakland Coliseum also features on the field bullpens, but come on. With its ample foul territory, the Coliseum is the ONLY ballpark where it actually makes sense to put them there. I mean, just look at it.

Most foul balls hit to the bullpen mounds are uncatchable because it's too far of a run.