This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
The scene at Comerica Park on Monday morning looked like something out of an action movie, or the diamond heist scene of “Ocean’s Thirteen”: A helicopter hovered overhead as workers attached a line to a bank of lights, which the helicopter then pulled away from its tower and set down in a nearby parking lot. The process was repeated all day until all the lights were moved off the towers.
It was the first step toward the Tigers upgrading Comerica Park to LED lighting for next season, a process most other Major League parks have either done or are currently undertaking. The same helicopter pilot, in fact, did the same work at Wrigley Field earlier this fall. The same crew is expected to return to Comerica Park in February to install 472 new LED fixtures, which will then be tested ahead of the Tigers’ home opener on April 6.
The LED lights will provide more even lighting throughout the field for players, fans and television viewers. Since they also turn on and off instantly, they’ll also allow for special effects displays to celebrate home runs or be synced to music. They’ll do all this while consuming less energy than the high-powered bulbs they’re replacing and requiring less maintenance than the previous infrastructure, which dates back to the ballpark’s opening in 2000.
“It’s pretty considerable,” Tigers vice president of park operations Chris Lawrence said of the energy conservation. “For us, being able to take advantage of that was an ancillary benefit to this. At the end of the day, it’s a stadium that hosts professional baseball games, so that’s what drove the decision. Certainly on the back end of it, operationally, there’s some benefit, too.”
It’s a subtle upgrade that should become more obvious once the season starts and the difference in lighting can be seen. It could also end up being the biggest upgrade at Comerica Park this offseason.
While the Tigers have been noncommittal about any changes to the outfield dimensions, the outfield was unchanged as workers removed the lights on Dec. 12, 115 days ahead of the 2023 home opener. If any major changes are coming, the days to do them are dwindling. So, too, are the hours, since the ballpark will be dark after sunset for the next couple months.
President of baseball operations Scott Harris said at MLB’s Winter Meetings that he had no update on any potential changes.
“We are having conversations about enhancing the experience for all of the stakeholders that that touches,” Harris said. “Obviously it’s pitchers who have strong opinions [on the ballpark dimensions], hitters who have strong opinions, fans who have strong opinions, staff who have strong opinions.”
Harris’ personal views on ballpark dimensions, however, might have been a hint.
“My general opinion on dimensions is that I would prefer to be on one side of the aisle or the other,” Harris said. “I would prefer to have the opportunity to have some asymmetry in the environments that we’re playing. If we’re on one side of the aisle as a pitcher’s park, or on the other side of the aisle as a hitter’s park, we have the opportunity to build a team a certain way to take advantage of the dimensions 81 times a year because we are the only team that plays in our environment 81 times a year. So I would prefer not to be right down the middle when it comes to that.”
The view makes sense. Harris has made a point since his hiring in September that he’ll look for any competitive advantage the Tigers can get, however small. He would not be the first Tigers executive to try to build a roster that can play to a big ballpark. His predecessors — Al Avila, Dave Dombrowski and Randy Smith — sought athletic center fielders and speedy players, from drafting Curtis Granderson in 2002 to trading for Austin Jackson in 2009 and Anthony Gose in 2014. Trading Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler in 2013 not only helped Detroit’s infield defense, it diversified the team’s offense. Harris has already prioritized finding hitters who control the strike zone and produce more consistent quality contact, better at-bats and fewer strikeouts.
If the Tigers eventually decide on subtle changes, there are small tweaks they can make without a huge project. Of the 13 outs of 420 feet or longer at Comerica Park in the Statcast era (since 2015), at least two were hit near where the center-field wall meets the left-field fence that was created to shorten the left-field dimensions about 20 years ago. Moving that fence a bit at that intersection would reduce some of the longest outs without changing the ballpark’s character or requiring major construction.
So far, nothing seems set — aside from the lights.
“There’s a lot of stuff floating around, but most of it is kind of standard tweaks here and there to certain things to try to enhance the fan experience,” Lawrence said. “I’m sure there might be some more things that are floated out here in the next few months, but right now, this is enough to keep us busy.”