Fares and fouls: The Jays show off their plans for the Rogers Centre infield

It was almost exactly one year ago — July 28, 2022 — that the Blue Jays revealed the first detailed renderings of the renovations they were planning for the upcoming winter, finally giving fans an idea of what the reimagined outfield space at the Rogers Centre would end up looking like. It was a hit then, it was a hit when the changes were finally unveiled this spring, and I think already it's becoming difficult to remember what those underutilized parts of the park looked like back in the bad old days.

We'll see how it endures. We'll see how it feels out there years down the line when things for the product on the field get bleak and the trends in stadium construction change, but for now the changes have genuinely given the building new life.

Today, the club has given us a glimpse of what's to come over this winter, as they undertake the infield phase of the project, and... well... maybe they should have done this one first.

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Now, none of that is to say that there's anything wrong with what they're doing. Aesthetically, that is. Some of the stuff we're hearing about soaring costs for fans to keep their same seats — for example, in May, the team contacted CTV News to correct a story from a fan who was claiming that his $15,000 tickets had gone up nearly 10 times in price, assuring the public that this man's seats were merely going up to $36,000 — and the club's proud focus on adding "premium" areas that will allow those who can afford it to segregate themselves from the unwashed masses is pretty grotesque, even if such things are simple facts of life here in late-stage capitalism. But I digress.

Some of the less flashy aspects of the renovated infield include things that many fans, myself very much included, have been dreaming of — and vocal about — for years. Seats that face the infield! More legroom! Cupholders! Slats to allow airflow in the back of seats!

Frankly, it's the correct choice not to add too much zazz to this part of the stadium. It's just... yeah, it looks like a ballpark.

That said, there are some new and interesting details worth digging into and pointing out...

The end of the live ball era

Few things are more frustrating about the current setup of the ballpark, at least in terms of how the games are played, is how easy it is for some jerk-off sitting in one of the outfield corners to get so dumbly big-eyed about the possibility of getting a souvenir that for a second he forgets that there's a game to be won and reaches out to interfere with a ball in play, costing the Blue Jays bases, if not runs. And it's always the Blue Jays, it seems. Never their opponents. Stupid!

Now, we can finally — hopefully — say goodbye to these infuriating plays for good. The spot where balls in play will actually be accessible to fans will now be behind netting, as it's much closer to the infield. Technically there may still be those desperate and oblivious enough to try to put their grubby little fingers through the net and into play, but they should at least be doubly dissuaded by the fact that balls will be coming toward them much faster than they are farther down in the corner currently.

As you can see above, the seats in the corner will be much higher up. More importantly, though, you can also see the orientation of the seats here. It's a stark difference from the current setup, where anybody sitting flush in their seat is staring out at the old 55 yard line.

You probably get an even better sense of some of the new angles in the “flyover” video that the Jays provided in their media release.

They’re not going to screw up the TV view

There are some pretty noticeable differences between the image below and the current layout of the building. Zooming in, we can see that, for one thing, they've gone from two rows of premium seats behind the plate — aka Home Plate Lady seats — to five. And instead of being accessible the same way as any other seat in sections 119 to 124, they're essentially walled off from the rest of the crowd and accessible only from (presumably) the Home Plate Club underneath the 100 Level.

It was understood that this sort of thing was going to happen. And that, in all likelihood, there were going to be things like the (literal) second tier premium area we can see in the rendering below.

What we didn't know until now is much about how the TV backdrop is going to be affected, and whether or not we were going to be treated some kind of distracting Chase Field-style utter stupidity.

Mercifully, it appears we won’t be forced to look at anything like this for the next 20 or 30 years.

Screengrab via Yahoo

(Less mercifully, on Friday many Jays fans will be missing out on one of their last 30-odd regular season chances to see the current TV backdrop — not to mention Lucas Giolito’s debut for his new team — as the first game of the Jays-Angels series won’t be broadcast on Sportsnet. It’s another Apple TV+ game! Thanks, Manfred!)

Foul balls

When the Rogers Centre renovations were first announced, one of the more interesting things that I remember Mark Shapiro saying about it was the fact that the building currently has the second-biggest foul territory in the majors, and that part of the new layout would include reducing that. And it will! By about 3,000 square feet.

If that's a bit of an abstract number for you, well, it's 50 feet by 60 feet, or a little less than half the size of the diamond formed by the bases/home plate (uh... aka "the diamond").

That's a pretty good sized chunk of ground, and I've always wondered how the Jays were going to pull off eliminating a bunch of that wasted space while also having the park continue to play neutral — a stated goal of Shapiro's throughout this process.

These questions got louder in my mind when the outfield renovations were unveiled, which in their own right are supposed to be neutral. Neutral in a different way than it was before, with portions of the wall being moved in and then raised to compensate, but neutral nonetheless. This didn't jibe with what was going to come next, because reducing the size of foul territory is naturally a hitter-friendly move, since it means that some foul balls that would have been previously been caught for outs are going to end up in the seats, allowing at-bats to continue.

How were the Jays going to square this?

Well, we can see it above. The parts of the playing surface that will be most affected by the reduction are tough for fielders to get to. I don’t know if it’s right to say it’s full-on no-man’s land, because it’s not unheard of to see balls caught out there. But clearly they’re not putting fans on top of the base lines or screwing with the number of pop ups that will end up going over the netting behind the plate. I’d have to really dig into some data to say this with true certainty, but over the course of a season the impact on the results on the field appears as though it will be minimal.

OK, OK, I guess it all seems pretty good!

(All images via the Toronto Blue Jays unless otherwise noted)

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