Sam McDowell writes why the Royals decided to move in the fences.
When the Royals spin the wheels on their internal projections, it shows that moving in the fences averages to about 1.5 more wins in 2026.
In a search for every competitive advantage, the Royals believe they found one in changing their stadium dimensions.
How?
Well, their pitchers induce soft contact at a higher rate (17.3%) than any team in baseball and hard contact at the seventh-lowest rate (31.7%) in the league. The pitching staff will suffer some consequences, in other words, but not as much as their hitters will benefit, and their data shows star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. will benefit as much as anyone.
“When we looked at similar ballparks with our current pitching staff, the results are still very good in what would be similar to the new Kauffman dimensions,” general manager J.J. Picollo said, adding, “The group that we have right now in a small window where this stadium is still going to be in existence — we had a chance to capitalize.”
Pete Grathoff writes about how the new dimensions could help Bobby Witt Jr.
Ben Clemens at Fangraphs writes about how the stadium will play out.
Of course, the actual effect on scoring will be more nuanced and seasonal than my broad re-classification of batted balls. Dr. Daniel Mack, the team’s vice president of research, explained some of the additional factors the team considered when making the change: “(Senior analyst) Alan (Kohler) and I started breaking it down. What’s the effect of the walls? What’s the effect of the altitude? What’s the effect of the temperature and wind? Trying to figure out how to take all those effects into account and balance them.” Kauffman doesn’t play the same year round; Kansas City has huge variance in weather throughout the year, with meaningfully changing air resistance and wind patterns. The stadium plays differently in April than it does in July, something I didn’t even attempt to model in my quick take. But averaged across the year, I think the increase in scoring is at least in the realm of what’ll happen, adding enough home runs to more than take the sting out of the lost doubles.
I might not have the exact week-to-week fluctuations down, but the data is still good enough to make some predictions. I first noted which players would have seen the largest increases in Kauffman home runs with the new dimensions. Maikel Garcia’s 2025 batted balls would have produced five more homers with the new walls, per this estimation, while Jonathan India would also see his homer total increase by five. Salvador Perez’s would increase by four, with Vinnie Pasquantino’s and Bobby Witt Jr.’s going up by three apiece.
Craig Brown reacts to the changes.
Mack said they went back and forth on whether to alter the dimensions at the deepest part of the ballpark.
“I think that’s what made the project kind of exciting…When you do an optimization problem you kind of know the point at which you cross and you go, ‘we’re starting to get diminishing returns, things are going in the wrong direction.’ One of the most fun parts of the conversation…was center field. We kind of figured out there was an eight to 10 foot tolerance where things worked well in the favor that we were looking for, which was that fairness. Anything past that was not moving the needle enough or was starting to become too offensive.”
The theme of the press conference is in the above quote: Fairness.
David Lesky writes that a more neutral park will help the team.
But in speaking with people who know way more about baseball than me, one thing that kept coming up is the fact that extreme parks in any direction are not great for a team. Building a team to compete somewhere that doesn’t look like basically anywhere else leads to issues. It’s not that the Royals can’t compete on the road, but think about a pitcher like Seth Lugo for a second. He’s a smart guy, so he knows there are differences, but let’s say he makes a pitch to Byron Buxton that Buxton hits high and deep but gets caught at the wall in left center at Kauffman Stadium. Then he makes that same pitch to Buxton in Minnesota and it’s 15 feet over the wall. There’s just no consistency in the process. So making a park that’s more neutral is huge here.
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Main Street Sports, which owns FanDuel Sports Kansas City, is offering MLB teams three-year deals, but will cease operations if they cannot find a buyer. [$]
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