As good as grass? What weve learned after a year of artificial turf in Arizona -

Standing in his clubhouse next to a few of his players in early May, Rays general manager Erik Neander caught himself watching a Diamondbacks game on TV. The game was in Arizona, and Neander was surprised to see bright green, perfectly manicured grass spread across Chase Field’s outfield. I thought they switched to turf, the GM said aloud. They must have abandoned the process. His players corrected him. No, they said, that’s the turf.

“I was blown away by the look of it,” Neander said this week at the GM meetings in Paradise Valley.

A year after choosing to switch from natural grass to synthetic turf, it’s clear the move has paid aesthetic dividends for the Diamondbacks. While dry, brown patches dominated the outfield late in seasons past, Arizona’s “grass” popped all year in 2019. And though moving to turf creates its own maintenance issues — the grounds crew has to be especially careful to keep the infield dirt and the turf’s coconut-based infill separate, going so far as to lay a red carpet over the edge of the infield grass during batting practice to prevent players from tracking the two substances back and forth — the switch has saved a lot more than just sensitive eyeballs. According to a team spokesperson, going to a synthetic surface saved the organization 4.7 million gallons of water and 325,000 kilowatt-hours of energy, the latter previously used to cool a building that was forced to keep its roof open every day until mid-afternoon in order to sun the grass.

But it’s less clear how the switch affected the reason the Diamondbacks listed as most important in their choice to abandon natural grass: player health. Players with past experience on turf have suggested that it is harder on the legs and knees than natural grass, although Arizona’s surface is supposed to be the latest and most natural-like of any synthetic surface. The Diamondbacks this year did have at least two injuries that could be connected in some way to the synthetic turf, but neither presents a clear-cut case.

When outfielder Steven Souza Jr. tore several knee ligaments slipping on home plate a few days before Opening Day, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo speculated that Souza’s plastic spikes, usually worn on turf as opposed to the metal spikes favored for natural grass, could have played a role. But that hardly counts as an injury caused by the turf itself, and Lovullo even said that Arizona’s surface seemed so close to real grass that he thought it better for his players to wear metal spikes anyway.

The other injury with a possible turf connection was the stress reaction that sidelined outfielder Ketel Marte, who finished fourth for the National League MVP award despite missing the last nine games of the season. At the time of his diagnosis, Marte suggested through an interpreter that “the artificial turf took a toll on me,” although he immediately tried to walk the comment back. Even if Marte truly believed the turf played a role — and not just all the extra running he did playing the outfield for the first time in his career — it’d be impossible to decisively prove that was the case. For his part, Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen believes the turf was not a factor.

“We are going to continue to ask those questions and look into that,” Hazen said. “But we do not believe that from the questions we’ve asked so far, from the information we’ve gotten from him, from the information we’ve gotten from others, our medical staff’s review of it.”

Of course, the comparison point for the Diamondbacks is not the type of natural grass that grows so vibrantly at stadiums in greener parts of the country. “I do want to juxtapose any conversation we have on this turf with what our field used to look like in July and August in the past,” Hazen said. Arizona’s late-summer grass was often loose, thin and unpredictable. Lush natural grass may be the ideal playing surface, but the Diamondbacks did not have lush natural grass.

They are not the only team for whom an artificial turf is a necessary evil. The Rays and the Blue Jays, both of whom play in indoor stadiums, have played on synthetic surfaces for years. The GMs for both teams, Neander for the Rays and Ross Atkins for the Blue Jays, know their surfaces, which are not the exact same product used by the Diamondbacks, are a bit rougher on players than a natural one. “The fact that you’re not on soil is definitely something to be cognizant of,” Atkins said.

Neander added that “there’s only so much you can do to eliminate the feel of a concrete floor sitting somewhere below,” although it’s important to note that, unlike the Rays’ Tropicana Field, the Chase Field’s turf sits upon a shock pad that sits upon natural earth.

Both teams have done their best to mitigate the negative effects of artificial turf. (The Rays use a similar product from the same company that provided Arizona’s turf, Shaw Sports Turf, while the Blue Jays use a product from AstroTurf.) Atkins said the Blue Jays dug deeper under their surface to add more natural padding between the turf and the building’s concrete base. Both teams prioritize rest for their outfielders. “If we have an opportunity to pick a day off and it’s on an artificial surface versus not, we tend to pick the artificial surface,” Neander said.

Perhaps that’s a strategy the Diamondbacks could follow, although that tack’s logical extreme, playing the multi-positional Marte in the outfield on the road and in the infield at home, isn’t very reasonable. And anyway, perhaps because of all this caution and perhaps because of improvements in the underlying science of artificial surfaces, turf-related injuries are becoming less common, at least anecdotally.

Hazen said the Diamondbacks did not have “a lot of lower-body injuries this year,” from which he presumably is excepting Souza’s knee injury. Neander said he’s heard fewer gripes from players over the years. “Not one complaint from a player has reached us or our coaching staff throughout the course of the season,” he said. The Diamondbacks also canvassed opposing teams for their feedback throughout 2019 and received little criticism, according to Hazen.

One team has been particularly interested in how things went this year in Arizona. The Rangers will be using an artificial surface in their new stadium, which is set to open next year. They played at Chase Field in April and have communicated extensively with the Diamondbacks about their surface. Still, they’d like more feedback. Rangers GM Jon Daniels said his team hopes to work out once or twice at Chase Field during spring training next year in order to give their players more firsthand experience. Unlike the Diamondbacks, who have artificial turf covering a half-field and an agility field at Salt River Fields, the Rangers have no plans to install synthetic turf at their spring complex.

Once the Rangers’ turf is installed, the Diamondbacks’ will no longer be the state of the art. Texas’ surface is the “next generation” of the same product from Shaw, Daniels said. The science of artificial surfaces will continue to more and more closely approximate the look and feel of natural grass. But, even as the leaps become smaller and smaller with each generation, it’s difficult to say artificial turf will ever completely close the gap. It may be close enough for more teams to make the switch, but the real thing is the real thing.

Or, as Atkins offered in a comparison: “Will we ever use unnatural baseballs? Probably not.”

(Photo of Ketel Marte at Chase Field on July 5, 2019: Joe Camporeale / USA Today Sports)

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