RAYS
The roof at the Rays’ proposed ballpark in Ybor City is about the "same height at its peak -- 230 feet, give or take -- as at Tropicana Field, but the similarities end there," according to Richard Danielson of the TAMPA BAY TIMES. One "big difference" is that there are "no catwalks." That means there will be "nothing to get in the way of fly balls." Since the Tropicana Field's debut in '98, about 160 fly balls have "bounced off the catwalks." Structural engineering firm Walter P. Moore Principal Dylan Richard, who worked on plans for the new ballpark, said, "The first thing they put on the list is it’s got to accommodate the ball flight." Danielson notes to make sure it would, designers "did something they think is unprecedented." Through a system called Statcast, they "modeled the flight of 7,736 fly balls hit in fair territory at the Trop." They factored key elements of the data into some "complex mathematical equations to project the parabola of every single fly ball." Mapped into a computer model, the "re-created hits form a digital 'dome' of fly balls the designers could overlay onto their plan" for the new ballpark. They also put in data for "every ball hit in every ballpark by two of baseball’s best sluggers" -- Yankees RF Aaron Judge and LF Giancarlo Stanton -- and "superimposed that on the dome of hits from the Trop." The design team also "built a cushion of maybe 20 feet in case MLB changes the composition of the ball or players get stronger or start hitting the ball with more backspin" (TAMPABAY.com, 8/16).
