Kauffman Stadium, long one of baseball’s most cavernous and home run unfriendly ballparks, is getting a facelift. The Kansas City Royals announced Tuesday they are bringing the walls in about 10 feet this coming season. The team aims to make Kauffman Stadium more neutral offensively rather than so unkind to power hitters.

“Our goal here isn’t to have an offensive ballpark,” GM J.J. Picollo said in a statement. “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.”

Here are details on the new dimensions:

The wall will come in 8 to 10 feet starting near each foul pole — the gaps will go from 387 feet to 379 — and taper back toward centerfield, which will remain 410 feet. The height of the wall will also change, from 10 feet tall in most places to 8 ½ feet. About 150 seats will be added in left field and about 80 new drinkrail seats in right.

Kauffman Stadium has played as roughly a league average ballpark the last few seasons, though it has skewed heavily in favor of doubles and triples. Statcast’s park factors rate it as a top-five park for doubles and triples, and a bottom-five park for homers. In 2025, the Royals hit 70 home runs at home (27th in MLB) compared to 89 on the road (18th in MLB).

The primary beneficiaries will be Kansas City’s young power bats, specifically Jac Caglianone and Vinnie Pasquantino. Pasquantino, a lefty with significant pull power, hit 14 home runs at home and 18 on the road last year. Stalwart catcher Salvador Perez has hit 171 of his 303 career home runs away from Kauffman Stadium (56%).

The Royals have tinkered with the Kauffman Stadium walls several times in the past. They moved the walls in 10 feet in 1995 before moving them back to their original dimensions in 2004. The team’s front office researched the changes and recommended bringing the walls in 10 feet again to make the stadium a little more neutral.

“There’s a lot of different things that go into it,” Picollo said. “During the course of the season, we just started doing some research, running some numbers and trying to figure out how much this really impacts our offense. Consequently, how would it affect our pitching staff? Ultimately, we concluded that we would be a better team offensively. With our current pitching staff, the changes in the dimensions wouldn’t impact (the pitching) negatively as much as it impacts our offense positively.”

Kauffman Stadium opened in 1973. The Royals are seeking a new stadium and have pushed for a $2 billion facility near downtown Kansas City. The NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs currently play at Arrowhead Stadium in the same complex as Kauffman Stadium. The Chiefs are moving across state lines to Kansas in 2031.

The Royals went 82-80 and missed the postseason in 2025. They won a wild card spot in 2024 and have the talent, both on the mound and at the plate, to make a run at a postseason berth this coming season, if not at the AL Central title.