

Since 1992 Oriole Park at Camden Yards has been one of the most if not THE most iconic baseball stadium in Major League Baseball. The views of the Baltimore Skyline joined with the old B&O railroad warehouse has provided the Organization with one of the best stadium atmospheres in the game. When moving from Memorial Stadium to Camden Yards during the 1991 off-season, they decided to restore the old warehouse to incorporate into the new stadium. Due to the age of the structure and condition with coal dust and soot coating the warehouse, each brick had to be hand washed so it would not be damaged from high pressure washers ( A fact I learned while taking a stadium tour a few years back at Camden Yards). The stadium has stood for almost 30 years and only one home run has been able to hit the warehouse. A home run that was not even hit during a regulation game, but rather the 1993 Home Run Derby by one of the iconic players of that era, Ken Griffey Jr.



With a background and current job in Data Analytics, I decided to take a look at what are the chances a left-handed batter who steps up to the plate at Camden Yards has of not only hitting a home run but the chances that batter has to hit the warehouse over the course of one season. With data becoming more and more available to the public, I decided to use statcast data from the 2019 regular season from https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/ to determine the chances a batter has. Over the course of 2019, there were a total of 1,712 plate appearances by left-handed batters, regardless of team affiliation at Camden Yards. Of those 1,712 PAs, 104 total home runs where hit by lefties. Of those 104 HRs, only 64 were categorized as pull home runs that landed between right field and right center. Only 6% of the plate appearances by lefties resulted in a home run and of those plate appearances roughly 3.7% resulted in being pulled.

2019 was a monster years for number of total Home Runs. 6,677 total HRs were hit during the entire regular season. Of those 6,677 Home Runs, 2,665 were hit by lefties. When Griffey hit the warehouse during the 1993 Home Run Derby, its projected distance was 465 feet. Due to the placement of the plaque you see today on the warehouse where the baseball struck, I would guess that the magic number for distance is 460ft to bounce off the warehouse wall on the fly. During 2019, only 25 HRs by lefties traveled 460ft or longer. That means only .9% of all home runs by lefties traveled the distance to have a shot at hitting the warehouse. This would mean that with lefties having a 3.7% chance of hitting a home run AND pulling the ball. On top of that they have a .9% chance of it traveling 460ft or more. This would put the chance of a left-handed batter hitting the warehouse at .02% or essentially 1 in 5,000. Now given the data, everything that classifies as pull encompasses all home runs hit to not only right field but to right center. A 460ft home run to right center at OPACY has no shot of hitting the warehouse. This means the window the ball must travel through to have a realistic shot of hitting the warehouse is even smaller. That would lower the chances of hitting the warehouse to less that .02% and without finding better data that breaks down all home runs even further like a spray chart does into zones my best guess would be that a left-handed batter has a 1 in 10,000 or less chance of hitting the warehouse. That same batter would be more likely to get audited by the IRS or fall to his death than to achieve the feat that only Ken Griffey Jr. has been able to thus far.

In my lifetime, I would assume that I will get to see another home run hit the warehouse at OPACY but I would not hold my breathe. With the slim chances it will happen, I can mathematically now understand why only one batter, Ken Griffey Jr., was able to have a plaque with his name attached to the warehouse at OPACY. The stadium has stood for almost 30 years. It could possibly be another 30 before we ever see such as feat happen again.