The Orioles are changing the left-field wall at Camden Yards — again.
After dramatically adjusting the left-field dimensions at Oriole Park before the 2022 season, Baltimore will make alterations ahead of the 2025 campaign to limit the drastic effects the original change had.
Orioles Executive Vice President and General Manager Mike Elias announced the new dimensions — which will be friendlier to hitters than the recent wall but still better for pitchers than the pre-2022 version — during a news conference Friday afternoon. The changes will bring the left-field wall in between 9 and 20 feet and reduce its height between 5 and 6 feet after Elias said the ballclub “overcorrected” in 2022.
These alterations are less drastic than the ones the club made in 2022 when the left field wall was moved back nearly 30 feet and raised about 6 feet. Elias said this is a “happy medium” and will get the club closer to “what our original goal was.”
“We made the change between the 2021 and 2022 seasons as we were trying to pursue a more neutral but also a more pitcher-friendly array at Camden Yards,” Elias said during the video conference. “It was a directionally correct move but we overcorrected. And once we came to the decision that was the case, we decided it was something we wanted to address as soon as possible.”
While the Maryland Stadium Authority paid for the wall changes in 2022 in the form of rent credits for the club, covering roughly $3 million over five years, the Orioles will cover the cost of the upcoming adjustments, a source with direct knowledge of the plans confirmed to The Baltimore Sun.
Elias said additional seats won’t be added to fill the space created by the change to the wall, which will remain a deep 373 feet down the left-field line but will be between 363 and 376 feet at other parts. Other than a flat platform for Mr. Splash to stand while dousing fans with water, the team didn’t announce any plans for the new open space.
The original changes were implemented to turn one of MLB’s most hitter-friendly ballparks into a neutral venue. From its opening in 1992 through the 2021 campaign, Camden Yards saw 5,911 home runs — the most of any ballpark in that time. In 2019 alone, pitchers on the rebuilding Orioles surrendered 305 long balls, surpassing the previous MLB record of 258.
Baltimore’s brass wanted the new wall to make Oriole Park more balanced, hoping it would help the team’s pitchers and the front office’s ability to attract them in free agency. The changes, which put most of the left-field wall between 384 and 398 feet away from home plate and 13 feet away from the ground, did have their intended effect, as deep fly balls that felt like no-doubt home runs at any other ballpark often fell short and into the left fielder’s glove.
“Our hope is, by pulling the dimensions in a little bit … that we will be able to get closer to what our initial goal was: a neutral playing environment that assists a balanced style of play at a park that was overly homer-friendly prior to our changes in 2022,” Elias said. “This is one we still think will assist the pitching environment here at Camden Yards relative to where it was, but be a little less drastic, particularly as it pertains to our right-handed hitters.”
In 2022 and 2023, the Orioles were slightly harmed by the change, as their opponents had 15 fewer home runs robbed by the wall than Baltimore hitters. But that script flipped in 2024 as the Orioles benefited from the new wall, gaining eight homers over their opponents because of it.
The left field dimensions were such an anomaly — even in a sport in which ballparks often have strange features — that Baseball Savant created a dedicated webpage to track home runs lost because of the wall. Left-hander Cole Irvin was the pitcher who benefitted the most from the change, with 10 home runs saved by the wall, while right-handed slugger Ryan Mountcastle was the hitter most hurt, with 11 long balls stolen.
Elias said the decision to alter the wall wasn’t made to attract hitters on the free agent market, and he doesn’t expect it to impact the club’s ability to attract pitchers — a core reason of moving the wall back in the first place. But he does expect power numbers to slightly increase at Camden Yards.
“I think it’ll be easier for right-handed hitters to produce power numbers at this park, there’s no question about it,” Elias said. “I’m sure you can name the guys on our team that are probably the happiest about this news.”
Mountcastle frequently, yet professionally, expressed the challenges of being a right-handed power hitter at Camden Yards. In 2021, Mountcastle blasted 33 homers to set the Orioles’ rookie home run record. Since the wall was moved back, he’s hit only 53 in three seasons, seeing a 40% decrease in his home run rate.
The wall has been a constant discussion since 2022. New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge called the changes a “travesty,” referring to Camden Yards as a “create-a-park.” Former Orioles star and fan favorite Trey Mancini said that year that “no hitters like it, myself included.”
“This isn’t the kind of thing that we call a meeting for,” Elias said. “But the feedback consistently was that the extremity of the disparity in the park was a little bit more of a topic of conversation than we had bargained for. We didn’t like the degree to which this had become a distraction in many ways. I know that the pitchers enjoyed it. But for our hitters … aspects of this were a little severe.
“I’m hopeful this will strike the right balance.”
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