Move the fences back! Balls are flying out of Target Field left and right (also to center). Whatever the explanation -- and it's perhaps some combination of the heat/humidity, awful Twins pitching, improved Twins right-handed power and maybe even the ballpark itself "settling" -- and there have been exactly 100 home runs hit at Target Field this season in just 45 games.
The downside for the local club is that the Twins have hit 43 while their opponents -- helped by the A's slugging nine in a three-game series sweep over the weekend, some of them absolute moon shots -- have hit 57.
To put that in perspective, Twins pitchers allowed just 64 home runs at Target Field in all of 2010, the year the park opened. The Twins hit just 52 at home that year, meaning there were 116 total HRs at Target Field -- an average of 1.43 per game. Last season, there were 126 (80 by the visitors) -- an average of 1.56 per game. This season? A whopping 2.22 per game so far. That puts Target Field in the upper-half of MLB in terms of HRs per game this season.
Given the overall numbers for Nick Blackburn (15 HRs in 63.1 innings), Cole De Vries (9 HRs in 35 innings), Jason Marquis (9 HRs in 34 innings) and Liam Hendriks (10 HRs in 38.1 innings), we shudder to think what might have happened this season if the Twins had acquiesced on demands to move the fences in.
