Slow turf matches slow start at home for Blue Jays
It was suggested to Jose Bautista on Tuesday that the Rogers Centre’s new turf looks slower to the naked eye. “It looks slower to all kinds of eyes,” the Blue Jays right fielder deadpanned.
“It’s weird, but we’re going to have to adjust,” he said. “It’s definitely a lot slower than it was in the past and a lot slower than any other artificial turf I’ve ever laid my feet on.”
The Jays, who will transition to natural grass in time for the 2018 season, installed a brand new playing surface after using the previous iteration for five years. Typically artificial turf plays harder and faster than natural grass, which was the case with the Jays’ old carpet. But the new field, still plush and full having not yet been rolled up on itself to make way for football or monster trucks, almost absorbs ground balls. “It’s slower and it’s thicker,” Bautista said, adding that the outfield roll isn’t as true, either. Not yet anyway.
Jays officials say the turf will quicken as it is used more, and particularly after it is rolled a few times and the rubber infill — those black pellets, which puff a smoke-like cloud with every bounce — settles into the simulated root zone.
For now, at least, the Jays will deal with the good and the bad of a slower field, which may equalize some of their home park’s fly-ball friendliness. “There’s not going to be many seeing-eye singles,” second baseman Devon Travis said.
On Tuesday the turf seemed to, at turns, both help and hurt the Jays, who lost 3-2 to the Tampa Bay Rays, evening their season’s tally to 4-4. But the grounds weren’t a significant factor. Certainly not when Rays outfielder Steven Souza Jr. opened the scoring in the first inning by crushing a Daniel Norris fastball just under the video board in straightaway centre field. "It likewise mattered little when Souza Jr. snuck a leadoff bunt single in the 8th and came around to score the winning run on a sac fly after Russell Martin — who is still searching for his second hit as a Blue Jay — made a throwing error trying to nab him stealing second.”
The Jays’ old turf, which was used from 2010 to 2014, had for its first four years used a combination sand and rubber infill, which eventually became so compacted that before last season the grounds crew went through the painstaking process of tamping it all out and replacing it with a fresh, all-rubber infill. But that was just to get them through another season. Because the new infill remains unsettled, the turf feels bouncier, something Bautista said he experienced.
“The bristles don’t really flatten when you step on them,” he said. “You’re, like, on a little platform.”
Again, Jays officials say this will change in time.
The team was not aiming to install a turf that played any differently — it’s the same brand as before. The old one had just reached the end of its lifespan. One advantage of the softer surface may be a gentler impact on players’ bodies. Artificial surfaces are known for being particularly hard on the joints. “As a hitter I would take the (old turf),” Bautista said. “As a player, just overall feeling, this feels a little better. But it’s brand new, we’ll see how it settles.”
Dalton Pompey, who played on the old turf last September, agreed the new turf feels better so far.
“The first day I was out on the turf last year my hips were sore and I felt, kind of like shin splints. This year I didn’t feel it at all. So I think that’s a good thing,” he said. “But in terms of on the field, for a hitter, it’s a little tougher. I guess you gotta give something up to get something.”
Jose Reyes, the Jays’ 31-year-old shortstop and perhaps their biggest turf concern given his history of leg injuries, said he would take that trade-off. But right now it’s too early to tell if that’s the case.
“If this is going to be better for my body, I like this one (more),” he said. “But if it’s going to be the same as the other one (in terms of the impact on his body), I’d prefer to hit on the other one. We’ll know later on in the season how good for our bodies it is.”
