The Kansas City Royals cited two big reasons why they chose to change the dimensions at Kauffman Stadium for the 2026 season. First, the front office hoped that the dimensions would play more fairly, particularly on home runs. Second, the staff hoped that hitters would be able to have a more consistent approach at home and on the road, not needing to tailor their swings based on whatever park they happened to be in.
As far as the former goal goes, it’s too early to tell based on one season of data,
but The K played like a true hitter’s park this season—one of the best hitter’s parks in the league. As far as the latter goal goes, it’s again hard for us to know whether guys had a more consistent approach at home versus on the road. It’s much more difficult for us to judge intent and approach as fans. What we can judge, however, are results, and the results on the road during the first year of the new dimensions at The K were not good.
Here’s a table breaking down how the Royals performed at home at the plate versus on the road:
The Royals at home were a very good offense. If the 110 wRC+ they accumulated at home was their full-season number, they would slot between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Milwaukee Brewers as the third-best offense in the league. This isn’t a fair comparison, as almost everyone performs better at home than on the road, but it shows that if you thought at times the Royals had a great offense, it was likely during one of their home stands. They have the fifth-highest home wRC+ in baseball, and ended up just one point behind the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the third- and fourth-place finishers, respectively.
The batting eye at Kauffman Stadium is considered excellent, and we see that contrast in the offense’s results on the road this season. The Royals struck out 150 times more on the road than at The K. They hit 16 more home runs at home this season. Their batting average was 36 points higher in Kansas City. Interestingly enough, they drew a similar number of walks between home and road games.
Overall, the Royals finished with a slightly below-average offense (a 98 wRC+). Their 24-point gap between their home wRC+ and their road wRC+ was the biggest gap in baseball this year. As good as the Royals were at home this year, they were significantly worse on the road, which brought down their overall average. Not for nothing, the Royals had a 40–39 record at home this season to go with a 28–53 record on the road.
What does all of this mean? Is batting at the new-look Kauffman so great for hitters that we need to expect a Coors Field hangover effect? Were the Royals just a bad hitting team buoyed by a great hitter’s park? Was this a large but not unexpected variance between home and road, and due to various factors outside of the batters‘ control, will look more normal next season? Why are we even alive?
I don’t think we have enough information to get good answers to these questions, but for this season we can say that whatever the Royals hoped moving the walls would do to help the team’s consistency between home and road results did not work. Whether this is just variance, whether the Royals need to petition to install the Kauffman batting eye in all stadiums, or whether something else entirely is causing this difference in results (such as needing to get more sleep on the road or something) is up to the Royals to figure out and implement changes.
