Foul Outs

While watching the Yankees-Red Sox game tonight on ESPN I was interested in the Rick Sutcliffe's comment that a foul ball that landed in the seats behind third base would have been caught in other parks such as Oakland Coliseum. I've looked at some quantification of foul outs before in relation to homeruns but thought I'd run the numbers myself using play-by-play data for 2003 and 2004.

Without further ado, here are the numbers of foul outs in decreasing order in those two seasons where FO3 means foul outs behind first base etc....

     FO3  FO5  FO2  FO9  FO7 Total
OAK  126  118   55   18   28  345
TBA  120  111   47   24   35  337
FLO  135   80   73   24   22  334
CHA  123   92   74   20   17  326
LAN   98  118   61   17   16  310
TEX  120   90   78    8   11  307
MIN   99   88   58   32   29  306
MIL  125   82   70    9   12  298
ANA   81   92   71   21   25  290
SEA   95   92   69   16   18  290
ARI  107   85   48   18   18  276
DET   83   95   53   17   23  271
BAL  103   73   52   14   26  268
CIN   88   89   64   10   17  268
TOR  115   74   43   13   22  267
PHI  116   80   45   13   11  265
KCA   97   84   58   13   11  263
SDN   87   84   36   23   21  251
SFN   84   65   66   13   17  245
COL   94   64   43   22   20  243
SLN   97   70   54   14    6  241
NYN   90   60   64   16   11  241
CLE   79   72   63    9   17  240
MON   79   69   55   20   15  238
ATL   84   75   30   33   15  237
BOS   81   70   74    3    5  233
CHN   73   60   66   10    9  218
HOU  106   58   38    9    4  215
PIT   79   53   44   18   11  205
NYA   62   55   77    3    6  203

So the difference between parks with the most foul outs and fewest is on the order of 70 per season. From this list it appears Oakland, Tampa Bay, and Florida have the most foul territory around the infield while Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and Atlanta have the most foul territory in the outfield. It's not surprising that the smallest outfield foul territory looks like Boston, Yankee Stadium, and Houston.