KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Just a few weeks into the new year, the Kansas City Royals announced that the outfield walls at Kauffman Stadium would be moving closer to home plate in 2026. That means home runs, for both the Royals and visiting teams, will be much more likely.
Specifically, Kauffman Stadium’s walls in left and right field will be moved in by eight to ten feet starting at each foul pole, tapering back to centerfield, where the wall will remain at 410 feet. In addition to moving the walls in, the franchise will also lower the height of the wall across the outfield by about a foot and a half to 8.5 feet.
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A rendering of the new dimensions of Kauffman Stadium after its outfield wall was brought in and more seats were added to the outfield.
While the move will almost certainly allow more runs across the plate at Kauffman Stadium, Royals General Manager J.J. Picollo said the goal was not to drastically change the nature of play at the stadium. Rather, Picollo said the team’s goal was fairness.
“Our goal here isn’t to have an offensive ballpark,” he said at the conference announcing the change.
“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.”
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With that being said, the question of how many more homers Kauffman Stadium may provide in 2026 remains. However, with baseball being more of a monitored sport now more than ever in terms of statistics and measurements, there are tools to predict this sort of thing.
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In a recent study conducted by FanGraphs Baseball, researchers compiled every batted ball from 2025, comparing it to both the ballpark dimensions at the time they were hit and the new, smaller dimensions.
That study found 43 batted balls that were flyouts in the 2025 season, and would have likely been home runs with the new outfield configuration.
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In addition to the relatively small sample size of the 2025 season, FanGraphs also compiled data for who would’ve gained the most homers since the 2015 season if the walls were where they are now.
Interestingly enough, the top two batters in terms of “gained” home runs when looking at this data are current Royals Salvador Perez with 25 gained homers and Bobby Witt Jr. with 15. Witt Jr.’s number is particularly interesting when considering that he’s only been playing at Kauffman Stadium since April 2022.
That data also showed that Vinnie Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia would likely see more homers in 2026; Pasquantino would’ve hit seven more out of the park in his tenure at The K, and Garcia would’ve hit nine more out since debuting in July 2022.
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That’s not all to consider, though. Alas, Royals pitchers may be stuck with the potential adverse results of moving the fences in.
However, as Picollo mentioned in the club’s news conference back in January, the science behind the decision to move the walls aligned with the Royals’ desire to play on an even field with the rest of Major League Baseball, literally.
Much like coming up with numbers for how many offensive homers the Royals may see in 2026, FanGraphs also looked into how many balls may leave the yard on the other side of the ball.
Only three pitchers on the Royals’ current roster were among the list of pitchers who would’ve allowed more home runs with shorter walls at The K since 2015: Daniel Lynch IV (10), Kris Bubic (9) and Michael Wacha (8).
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These numbers should be looked at with perspective of the research that was done leading up to this decision, though.
One of the main reasons as to why the Royals made this decision was to better prepare their players– that goes for pitchers and hitters.
Daniel Mack, with the Royals’ research and development department, confirmed that the club believed having a ballpark more similar to those the team sees on the road would make it all the easier to perform well at Kauffman Stadium.
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The idea is that pitchers who are used to being able to give up a fly ball that lands in a glove 400 feet away from home plate in The K’s left or right center field won’t be surprised when that same batted ball scores runs while on the road. On the offensive side, hitters who smash a well-hit ball into the outfield won’t adjust their swings depending on which stadium they’re in, leading to a more consistent ball club.
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While these numbers and ideas can certainly provide some excitement and interest for Royals fans, the only thing fans can do now is wait for the 2026 season to begin and see if moving the walls impacts Kauffman Stadium as much as researchers think it can.
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