Target Field sat almost eerily quiet during the Twins’ Thursday night intrasquad game.
Almost every single seat in the stadium was empty with a couple team employees scattered about. A majority of the noise in the park seemed to be coming from reliever Sergio Romo out in the bullpen, who could be heard from more than 400 feet away.
“Sergio all by himself is an in-game experience,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “…I think he was testing the acoustics in the building in a lot of ways and it helped. We were laughing while we were standing in the dugout.”
In between at-bats, the public address announcer would come over the speakers to introduce the next batter. Walk-up music played. And then, quiet.
“It’s weird and it was weird to think that that’s what it’s going to be like,” reliever Trevor May said.
In the coming days, the Twins will experiment during intrasquad games at the ballpark as they prepare for a season in which they will play in front of no fans — at the very least to begin with.
Starter Jake Odorizzi suggested practicing with crowd noise. Baldelli said they were going to make “back-and-forth,” suggestions in the coming days as they try to find something that might work for them during the regular season.
“We’re going to play with it and ultimately we’re going to find something for that dead zone in between when the audio and the music may shut off and a pitch is thrown and there’s some action on the field, I think we’ll find a way to make something happen,” Baldelli said.
While it will be impossible to fully recreate a situation where fans are in the stands, May said he was talking with Romo on Thursday how they might have to “make stuff up in our heads to try to get that adrenaline or imagine that the fans are at home mad at us or something.”
May said he wasn’t sure piped-in fan noise would make a big difference to him because it was obvious it was coming from a speaker. But coming up with a way to recapture the adrenaline rush he gets from fans is going to be a challenge he must confront.
“I feed directly off fan noise either way even when I’m on the road. If they’re really loud and excited, I just want to make them quiet and that’s something that goes through my head. I really enjoy that. It’s one of the more fun parts of the game for me,” May said. “…It’s just an odd, odd feeling that you’ve got to kind of reconcile and know why they’re not there and be OK with that.”
Odorizzi said his experience throwing in the intrasquad game on Wednesday was a good test to flip the switch with nobody in the crowd to “see if you can do it.” He said he proved to himself that he could and that he would be just fine this year.
Still, the Twins know it’ll be an adjustment trying to keep the same level of concentration and adrenaline during a season without a large crowd watching them and cheering them on.
“I think there’s certainly something about the in-game experience, the fans, the noises, the smells, the action kind of all around you, that I think allows some people to focus even better and probably does raise the adrenaline level in some way,” Baldelli said.
“I think that’s real. I don’t know if everyone thinks about it, notices it or would recognize it and say that, it’s just my opinion. But I do believe that you will get an increased attention span focus ability to lock in when your senses are heightened because of everything around you.”
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