Current MLB ballpark · 1991 – present

Rate Field

Chicago, IL

Also known as White Sox Park; Comiskey Park II.

Opened: 1991
Capacity: 40,241
Surface: Grass
Roof: Open
League: AL
Elevation: 595 ft
Orientation: 127° (SE)
Time zone: America/Chicago

How it plays

Every number is an index where 100 is league average. There is no such thing as one park factor — this park does different things to a triple than it does to a home run, and the only honest version is the whole row. Off 15,194 plate appearances in 2026.

	2026	2024-2026
Runs	98	98
Home runs	102	98
Triples	60	69
Doubles	95	95
Singles	98	99
Walks	100	104
Strikeouts	100	98
Value on contact	98	97
Expected on contact	101	99

How much of this is the park? Across 2022–2026, this venue's single-season value-on-contact index moved by ±1.6 points (a 4-point spread over 5 seasons). The league median is 3.0. Read a single season's figure with that much slack in it — the walls do not move, and the number does.

By the batter's side

Runs	108 RHB	90 LHB
Home runs	103 RHB	100 LHB
Value on contact	101 RHB	94 LHB

7,384 right-handed and 7,810 left-handed plate appearances — each side is half a season, so read these with at least the slack the combined figures carry — the band above is ±1.6 on twice this sample.

What FVR does about it

Every luck gap we measure at this park has −0.0144 subtracted from it, off 3,516 balls in play here this season. That is the number behind every board on this site, which is the only reason it is printed. It is not on the 100-is-average scale above: it is value on contact per ball in play, so it cannot be added to or subtracted from any index in this table. The two can even point opposite ways — Savant's runs index counts all offense, ours is only the residual against what the batted balls deserved.

Index figures: Baseball Savant, single-season and three-year rolling. What a park factor is, and is not →

The lore

Rate Field

A ballpark built to fix one problem inherited another, and spent thirty years answering for both.

The Upper Deck

HOK Sport, now Populous, designed the ballpark to eliminate obstructed views by setting the upper deck back over the lower deck. The result was immediate: the first row of the upper deck sat as far from the field as the highest row of the old Comiskey Park across 35th Street. Fans found it too high and too steep, and the comparison sharpened a year later, when Baltimore's retro-style Camden Yards opened and reframed what a new ballpark could look like. Renovations eventually removed 6,600 seats from the top of the upper deck and replaced the original blue seats with green ones.

The Ground

The park opened on April 18, 1991, in the Armour Square neighborhood, just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway and near Bridgeport, replacing the original Comiskey Park directly across 35th Street. The White Sox nearly did not stay to see it built. Voters had rejected ballot measures to fund a new stadium, and the club threatened a move to Tampa before Illinois Governor James R. Thompson secured funding for a site adjacent to the old park. The inaugural season drew a club-record 2,934,154 fans. Opening Day itself was a 16-0 loss to the Detroit Tigers before 42,191, with Thompson throwing the ceremonial first pitch.

The Moment

Game 2 of the 2005 World Series gave the park its signature night. Paul Konerko hit a grand slam on the first pitch from Chad Qualls to give the White Sox the lead, and Scott Podsednik hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth for a 7-6 victory — the first World Series games in Chicago since 1959. A replica of Bill Veeck's exploding scoreboard, originally installed at old Comiskey Park in 1960, sits above the center field bleachers.

The park has carried three corporate names — U.S. Cellular Field in 2003, Guaranteed Rate Field in 2016, and Rate Field in 2024. The 2026 season is its 36th. The Chicago White Sox are still the only club that has called it home.

Reporting: Wikipedia, MLB.com, Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, Ballparks of Baseball. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.

By the Desk · filed 2026-07-24 — the piece reads as of its filing; the park record around it is live · every fact in this piece comes from a filed, sourced research pack and clears an independent fact-check, and nothing is edited after filing.

The dimensions

Fence distances from home plate, in feet — the same venue.fieldInfo the scorecards draw their hit charts on.

Left field line	330′
Left-center	377′
Center field	400′
Right-center	372′
Right field line	335′

Home club

CWS Chicago White Sox

Games we’ve scored here

71 games at this park in our books — every one transcribed mark for mark, reconciled to the official line. The most recent:

…and 59 more in the scorecard archive.

Where it stands

333 West 35th Street, Chicago, IL 60616. Open the map →

Sources

MLB StatsAPI · as of 2026-07-23
Retrosheet · as of 2026-07-23

The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.