The Royals are changing things up at Kaufman Stadium.
Seeking more home runs at their home field, the Royals are moving most of their outfield fences by 10 feet, the team announced Tuesday.
“We want a neutral ballpark where if you hit a ball well, it should be a home run,” Royals general manager J.J. Picollo told ESPN. “The second they start feeling like they can’t get the ball out of the ballpark, they start changing their swing. I watched it for years and years and years, and I just felt like this is the time to try to push it and see if everything we felt for however many years is accurate.”
While keeping their center field dimensions at 410 feet, the Royals will move right-center and left-center field from 389 to 379 feet.
The corners will remain at 330 feet.
The franchise is also planning to shorten the outfield walls from 10 to 8 ½ feet high.
Despite being tough on home runs, Kauffman Stadium has been slightly more friendly to hitters than pitchers over the years, thanks, in large part, to its massive outfield dimensions, which are the second-largest behind the Rockies’ Coors Field.
Over the past three seasons, The K has had a park factor of 101, meaning it has played slightly hitter-friendly.
The park’s size, though, has led to an outsized number of singles, doubles and triples, at the expense of home runs.
Kauffman Stadium had a home run park factor of just 85 over the last three seasons, which was tied for the third-lowest among all big league parks.
“Our goal here isn’t to have an offensive ballpark,” Picollo said. “It’s to have a very fair ballpark. We don’t want it to turn into a bandbox and every ball up in the air turns into a home run. We just want hitters to be rewarded when they hit the ball well, particularly in the gaps.”
The hope is that a more neutral ballpark, Piccolo added, could help the Royals build a consistent winner in Kansas City.
“It’s not that we’re trying to jump-start our offense,” Picollo said. “The more neutral it is at home, the better success we think we’ll have overall.”
Royals vice president of research and development/assistant general manager Daniel Mack said consistency for both hitters and pitchers is something the team has been searching for for years.
“You don’t want to make the park so offensive that it hurts your pitchers,” Mack said. “But one of the things we know is that our fly balls, particularly in parts of this park — the run value per fly ball is significantly less than the league. It’s in the bottom third. We know our players feel that viscerally.”
Royals slugger Vinnie Pasquantino sounded intrigued by the changes in a lengthy post on social media.
“I’m very curious how this is going to play out in multiple ways. And honestly mostly from a data perspective,” he wrote on X.
“Hitters like hitting at the K because the visuals are nice but everyone also agrees it’s been a pitcher’s park forever.”
