Royals Move In the Fences at Kauffman - and the Lineup’s Already Buzzing
In Kansas City, change is in the air - and it’s coming in about 10 feet closer to home plate.
The Royals are giving Kauffman Stadium a bit of a facelift this offseason, moving the right- and left-field fences in by nine to ten feet and lowering the wall height to 8.5 feet. It’s a move that’s not just about aesthetics - it’s about giving hitters a little more bang for their barrel, without turning The K into a launching pad. And for a slugger like Vinnie Pasquantino, it's hard not to get excited.
Pasquantino, who mashed 32 home runs in 2025, was one of the first names that came to mind when the Royals confirmed the project. He admits he’s feeling the buzz - not just for what it could mean for his own numbers, but for what it signals about the organization’s approach.
“The initial reaction is excitement, especially from a selfish perspective,” Pasquantino said. “It’s cool that the Royals were willing to look at it, do some research on it, see if it would benefit us - or just change the dynamic of the park a bit.”
That dynamic has long been defined by its spacious outfield. Kauffman has historically been a doubles and triples haven, but a tough place to go deep.
Over the last two seasons, the Royals have hit just 329 home runs - tied for sixth-fewest in baseball. At home, they’ve gone deep 146 times in that span, which ranks third-worst in the league.
Statcast’s Park Factor metric gives Kauffman a slightly hitter-friendly score of 101, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The extra-base hits are there - just not the long ball.
This adjustment is about finding a middle ground. Not turning the park into Coors Field, but rewarding well-struck balls that might’ve died on the warning track before.
“It’s simply: When a ball is hit well, you’ll be rewarded,” said GM J.J. Picollo.
That’s music to the ears of hitters like Pasquantino - and not just because it could pad the stat sheet. It’s about fairness. About turning crushed fly balls into the home runs they probably should’ve been all along.
Still, Pasquantino isn’t jumping ahead to projections or hypotheticals.
“If you look at our lineup the last few years, everybody has hit fewer home runs than expected,” he said. “What I don’t know is whether I got, like, seven more hits because the outfield was playing bigger.
… It’s such a weird thing because it’s both a positive and negative, based on who you ask. It changes things, it just does, especially from an analytical perspective.”
And he’s right - the analytics are already buzzing. One model run by Ben Clemens over at FanGraphs looked at every batted ball from 2025 and compared them against the new wall dimensions.
The result? Forty-three additional home runs across the season.
According to the model, Pasquantino and Bobby Witt Jr. would have each added three more homers. Salvador Perez?
Four. And guys like Jonathan India and Maikel Garcia would’ve seen a five-homer bump.
But while the numbers are fun to play with, Pasquantino isn’t spending his offseason crunching the “what-ifs.” He’s training in Nashville, getting ready for Spring Training, and preparing for the World Baseball Classic - not to mention an arbitration hearing. For him, the mission remains the same: hit the ball hard and let the rest take care of itself.
“I’ve stayed away from it because I don’t want to think about how it affects me,” he said. “Because what does that mean?
Does that mean outs being taken away? Are there doubles being taken away?
What does that look like? I think it’s something you try not to think about, especially in past tense, because it doesn’t matter.”
There’s a running joke among Royals players that when they’re on the road, it’s time to let the homers fly - because they’re not in cavernous Kauffman anymore. But most hitters will tell you: changing your approach based on the park is a dangerous game.
“We’ve been told that we change our approach, and I don’t know if there’s a way to quantify that,” Pasquantino said. “But it’s not something I’ve ever done, at least consciously.
I think in passing, you think about it like, ‘Hey, we’re in Yankee Stadium. Short porch.’
Or in San Fran, it’s really far out to right-center.”
The irony? Pasquantino has never homered in Yankee Stadium across seven regular-season games. But in San Francisco - one of the toughest parks in baseball for lefty power hitters - he’s gone deep twice in six games.
That’s baseball. Unpredictable.
Sometimes frustrating. And always humbling.
“It’s not like we’re going to flick balls out now with the new walls,” Pasquantino said. “You still got to get them.
It’s just more fair. It’s not, ‘Oh, I crushed this ball and the guy caught it at the wall or it went off the wall.’
It’s a homer now. Because it should have been a homer.”
So as the Royals get ready to break in a slightly cozier Kauffman in 2026, the hope is that the new dimensions don’t just help the team hit more home runs - but reward the ones they’ve already earned.