The highest ballpark in America has added points to many batting averages and extra feet to many a home run.

Fresno’s Ben Copeland has something else he likes about Security Service Field.

“I like home plate,” said Copeland, who homered off Rockies prospect Esmil Rogers and led the Grizzlies to a 7-2 win over the Sky Sox with three hits on Friday night. “I like the way my bat bounces off it, it’s kind of rubbery. Other plates don’t do that.”

Hey, whatever it takes.

Copeland’s fifth-inning shot bounced off the top of the wall in right and sealed Rogers’ fate in his home debut for Colorado Springs.

Rogers, regarded by Baseball America as the second-best pitching prospect in the Rockies’ system, worked past three walks in the second but was never quite the same, giving up four runs over his next three frames and exiting after the fifth.

“It was his first time pitching here and this place can play mind tricks with you,” Sky Sox catcher Sal Fasano said.

“He needs to understand that in Colorado Springs you can’t throw breaking balls down the middle of the plate. You know, it’s a tough place to pitch. If you can pitch here, you can pitch anywhere.

“The elevation has a lot to do with it,” Fasano added. “Your breaking ball still breaks, it just doesn’t have the same sharpness to it.”

For Rogers, the elevation wasn’t as noticeable as the temperature.

“I’ve been pitching in (Double-A) Tulsa where it’s 110 degrees all the time,” said Rogers, who went 8-2 with a 2.48 ERA for the Drillers before being called up last week. “Here it was like 60 degrees and it was cold.”

Copeland seemed perfectly at home — bouncy plate and all — picking up two of his hits early off Rogers, who was routinely hitting 94 mph on the stadium’s radar gun.

“I saw the ball pretty good, but he’s definitely not a guy you’d want to see night in and night out,” said Copeland, himself a midlevel prospect who was returned to the Giants’ organization after going to Oakland this offseason in the Rule 5 draft.

The Sky Sox closed the four-run gap to two when Kenny Perez doubled in a pair of runs in the seventh, but the Grizzlies blew the game open with three unearned runs off Randy Flores in the eighth.

“We’ve just got to put the ball in play with a little authority,” said Sky Sox manager Stu Cole, whose first-place team has lost seven of nine. “We’ve been doing a good job all year but it seems like we’re just in a little bit of a rut.”

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