According to baseball-reference.com, and as reported by Joe Christensen, the Twins' stadium ended the year tied with Kaufmann Stadium for the best place for pitchers in the AL.

There is a lot of legitimate speculation about the accuracy of park factors and how much the players on the team affect the outcome. Just taking a glance at the results seems to add some legitimacy. Noted hitters parks like Fenway, Coors, Minute Maid, and Bank One appear near the top of the lists and stadiums like Petco, PNC, and the Coliseum show near the bottom. Some teams who finished the year as pitching heavy teams, such as the (Devil) Rays also show with hitting friendly parks, providing evidence against the metric being determined by players.

It might be worth thinking about this since our new ballpark is going to be a bit smaller which may badly affect our fly ball heavy pitchers.

These findings are in line with a strange three year trend for the Metrodome. The Dome has been ranked on the pitcher's side of the list to an ever greater degree each of the last three years after finishing above average for hitters in all but one one of its previous dozen years. The Twins have had plenty of good years with good pitchers in those years, so maybe there isn't so much to worry about with the new stadium.

At any rate, it's interesting fodder for discussion. I'm at a total loss for theories as to why the Metrodome has become such a pitcher's park so suddenly after being a moderate hitters park for so long. There hasn't been a sudden glut of hitters parks opening to skew the average. They haven't made any sudden changes to the dome that I can say I'm aware of. Actually, this trend lines up with the change to the speaker ground rules, but that affects maybe 2 plays a year and should make the park better for hitters anyway. Any theories?