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Posted at 11:00 AM EST. 

7:35 PM EST. For the first 30 years that they were in Atlanta, the Braves played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. It was known as the “Launching Pad,” as balls regularly flew out of the round, ashtray-type stadium that was a hitter’s paradise. It had the highest elevation in baseball, at least until Coors Field opened in Colorado in 1993. That was the big thought of why the balls carried so well and made ordinary hitters power hitters. So far this year at SunTrust Park, there has been an average of 2½ home runs per game. That’s the highest in the major leagues.

The players can even tell in batting practice when it’s a home run derby every day. Why is this new stadium different? Well, aside from that aforementioned elevation, home plate at SunTrust Park is pointed toward the southeast while Turner Field’s pointed north-northeast. Wind conditions are better. Right field in SunTrust Park is closer to home plate than it was in Turner Field — by five feet straight down the line and by 15 feet in the right-center field gap.

The beautiful thing right now is that the oddsmakers have not made the true adjustments. This park is playing like Coors Field and the total is like Citi Field. It’s absurd but it’s sweet as can be. We’ve been discussing other factors that affect the flight of the baseball and that, too, is in play here. There is a scale that takes into account humidity, as well as temperature and elevation-related barometric pressure that gives us an Air Density Index reading at every ballpark or zip code and the reading today at SunTrust Park is 57.91 and dropping. Keep in mind that Coors Field is generally in the low 50’s while almost all other parks are between 64 and 80. Also keep in mind that low Air Density Index means high scoring and a high density reading means low scoring. There are games from time to time at Coors Field that end up with five or six runs scored but those are few and far between and the same applies here. If the books posted totals of 8½ at Coors, they would get buried and we’re going to attempt to take advantage of this extreme house inefficiency until they make the adjustments.

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