Salt Lake adds humidor to Smith's Ballpark

They say a pitcher's best friend is the double play. But if that hurler is plying his craft in Northern Utah, his new best friend could be a spare refrigerator from a basketball arena.

The reason? This spring, Salt Lake became the fifth Pacific Coast League club to install a humidor, meaning nearly one-third of the 16-team league has thousands of air-conditioned balls kept at identical specifications. But unlike the humidors that came before it, the Bees' came from an industrial kitchen of an NBA team.

The Bees are owned by Gail Miller, widow of Larry H. Miller, who also purchased the Utah Jazz. With baseballs flying out of Salt Lake at prodigious rates, the basketball team stepped up to send the Triple-A club an unused appliance from Energy Solutions Arena.

Smith's Ballpark sits 4,229 feet above sea level, a little over one mile south of Salt Lake City. Located between Nevada to the west and Colorado to the east, Idaho and Wyoming to the north and Arizona to the south, the state suffers from a rare mix of high altitude and low humidity that few ballparks, even in the Pacific Coast League, have to cope with.

Smith Ballpark's regularly ranks as one of the most hitter-friendly ballparks on the circuit as a result of this climate as the thin, dry air leads to pitchers serving up rock-hard baseballs to eager batters.

This problem is not new. Several teams play at higher altitudes, others in humid conditions, and a few have both. The Colorado Rockies installed a humidor at a cost of about $15,000 in 2002 (roughly $20,000 in 2015), and prior to Salt Lake, four PCL teams had followed suit by storing their baseballs in a climate-controlled room.

The Colorado Springs Sky Sox were the first Minor League team to adopt the practice in 2012, quickly followed by the Albuquerque Isotopes the next season and the El Paso Chihuahuas and Reno Aces in 2014.

"It's just an 8x8x10 refrigeration box," said Bryan Kinneberg, Salt Lake's baseball operations manager. "It's a custom-installed walk-in refrigerator that any food kitchen would have installed.

"We have about five racks in there with baseballs still in their boxes and wrappers. We put them in at least two weeks prior to a game to acclimate. Then we will rub them up a few days before we play a game or use them in a game. Then they will go back in for a couple days."I

The humidor is housed right under the ballpark, across from the umpire's locker room and next to the entry to the home team's dugout. Humidity is kept at 50 percent and the temperature inside is kept at 78 degrees, although Kinneberg said it can be kept as low as 65 degrees.

"We have a protocol in terms of how long the baseballs have to be in and how long they can stay out," added Kinneberg. "Most of these are modeled after Coors Field because they were the first to install one. We also got direction from Minor League Baseball."

The Bees started the installation process when the club turned the water to the ballpark back on in the middle of March. Now fully functional, only two people have keys to the room -- Kinneberg and Bees clubhouse manager Ely Rice.

The refrigerator can hold up to 3,600 balls at any one time. Each case is dated when it arrives so the team can monitor how long the balls have been in there. "We rub up 10 dozen balls per game, so one case," Kinneberg said. "We typically have eight games in a homestand, so we rub up about eight cases at a time. Then we replace a case per night.

"We bring them out five minutes before the game, and they are escorted out to the field. If we go in a rain delay, we bring that bag back in and use another bag that we have rubbed up. It will take between five and eight hours before they become acclimated again."

"[Salt Lake made the decision] in conjunction with the Angels," Kinneberg said of installing a humidor. "They felt it would give them a better evaluation of their pitchers and how their numbers would reflect in Anaheim.

"The humidor puts moisture into the ball. You can't really feel the physical difference, but it softens the ball. The coefficient of restitution -- the COR -- on it changes it a little bit, so basically it won't travel as far. What happens when you have a dry climate, especially at elevation, is that the ball dries out quicker and so it's harder and the impact off the bat is greater. The theory is that the baseballs would be conditioned the same way they would be in LA and the other Major League parks."

The Bees start the first of 11 homestands at Smith's Ballpark on Friday against Sacramento.

For an estimate of how the introduction of a humidor may affect run scoring at Smith's Ballpark, here's a look at how humidors have impacted the offensive environment at the four PCL ballparks that have one installed:

Colorado Springs

Between 2006-11, Colorado Springs ranked in the bottom four for ERA, including worst in the league with a 5.15 mark in 2006 and a 6.41 ERA in 2011 when the Sky Sox surrendered 1,005 runs, the most of any Minor League team in any league at any level in the past decade.

The Sky Sox had a composite 5.38 ERA in those six seasons, allowing an average of 138 homers per season. That homer total has dropped 10 percent in the three years since the humidor was installed.

Security Service Field's park factors for runs and hits also have decreased, and the ballpark's park factor for home runs has been below league average the past three seasons. In 2014, 12 of the other 15 teams saw more homers at their home ballparks than the Sky Sox, who had a park factor of 0.88.

Albuquerque

In 2013 and 2014, Isotopes Park had 29 percent more runs and homers than the league average and 17 percent more hits. The two years prior to the humidor, there were 44 percent more runs, 48 percent more homers and 24 percent more hits than league average.

The Isotopes had a 5.18 ERA in the seven years between 2006-12. In the two years since the humidor was installed, the team ERA has lowered to 4.77.

Reno

From moving into Aces Ballpark in 2009 to the final year of the pre-humidor era in 2013, the Aces had a team ERA of 5.21. After installing the humidor ahead of the 2014 season, the team ERA dropped to 4.36.

To put it into further perspective, Reno's home park yielded 48 percent more runs, 60 percent more homers and 18 percent more hits than the PCL average in 2009. Though the 2014 numbers were still above league average, they dropped to 39 percent more runs, 33 percent more homers and 21 percent more hits than the PCL average.

El Paso

The sample size for El Paso is obviously limited since the humidor was installed as part of the original ballpark design, meaning there are no pre-humidor numbers with which to compare 2014. That said, the ballpark is almost 3,800 feet above sea level, considerably less than in Colorado Springs (6,000 feet), Albuquerque (5,300 feet) and slightly less than Reno (4,400) and Salt Lake City (4,300).

The humidor appears to have reduced offense from comparisons with Salt Lake, with Southwest University Park playing neutral for pitchers and hitters in terms of runs and hits and slightly in favor of pitchers in home runs.