Why Royals believe change in dimensions at The K could make a pivotal difference
Last opening day at Kauffman Stadium, then-Royals newcomer Jonathan India almost immediately got his “welcome to The K” moment when he led off with a 368-foot line drive to left field …
For an out.
“I can picture it pretty well,” Daniel Mack, the Royals’ assistant general manager for research and development, said in an interview with The Star on Monday shortly before the Royals opened their home season against Minnesota.
The ball would have been out of 11 other MLB stadiums. Another ball India crushed later in the game would have been out of several. Instead, he had an 0-5 debut with the Royals.
“I hit some balls that I thought were going to go,” India told reporters the next day, “but they don’t go here.”
Now, though, those would go.
Or at least not be outs on the revamped field introduced Monday.
And while that’s some vivid anecdotal testimony to why the Royals moved in the fences for this season, it’s only a sliver of the data compellingly presented by Mack and Alan Kohler, the club’s senior analyst, research and development, among others to owner John Sherman and Royals administrators.
Because it’s been what might be called an evergreen topic that’s picked up momentum in the last few years since J.J. Picollo took over as general manager.
“We talked about the walls … a lot,” Mack said. “Sometimes you talked about the walls in a good way. A lot of times, especially early in the season, it (was because) it just seems like we can’t … get … offense.”
(As it happens, home runs by Kyle Isbel and Isaac Collins accounted for all the Royals runs Monday in their 3-1 win over Minnesota. But each would have been out last year, too).
Some 18 months ago, Mack said, the Royals launched a deep dive after Picollo broached the possibility of exploring strange new worlds. Or as Mack recalled him saying, “How can we find a way to think about this creatively that sort of allowed us to open the throttle up?”
Among the numerous factors that emerged with more research and scrutiny was a pivotal wind element that typically has made the cavernous dimensions all the more so.
On average, Mack said, the Royals’ fences play as if they were 5 feet further out.
“You suppress,” he said with some understatement, “certain aspects of the game.”
What they came up with reflected the conviction that a venue that simply plays more evenly overall will benefit the Royals more than their opponents in the aggregate.
“The concept of the approach was we wanted fly balls to play fairly in Kauffman Stadium …” Mack said. “What kind of changes can you do there to just turn that into fair?
“And fair is if it’s the average run value across all of Major League Baseball. Because we were bottom five before, with Colorado (at altitude) way on the other side of that. We don’t want to be (at that extreme), either.”
At least as it meets the eye, it’s more nuanced than radical — particularly considering how it looked to Mack when he saw a stake in the ground during the initial survey work and mistook the new warning track for the new fence.
Seeing the work in progress last month, that dynamic was similarly startling for Sherman, who also suggested pitcher Cole Ragans was on the verge of a heart attack at the sight.
In its final form, though, the change — 8 to 10 feet closer in the corners with the gaps tapering toward a still 410-foot centerfield — certainly doesn’t appear overwhelming.
“Had you not been here before, I don’t think you would have known the difference,” said manager Matt Quatraro, who on Monday was seeing the final product for the first time.
Beyond what Picollo called the corners playing “a little different,” the fan experience will be so similar they should feel like they’re still, well, at Kauffman Stadium.
“It’s not a weird fence …” he said. “No nooks and crannies, no Houston with that right angle in left field.”
He added, “Seeing it come together is kind of fun. Now to see how it plays is really the ultimate test.”
The net effect of being a middle-10 MLB setting now, Mack believes, will include some reordering of how overall balls and flies play in a stadium that he called “weirdly offensive” from what fans might think— a great capacity for doubles and triples — despite the challenges to hitting home runs here.
“What we’ve probably done is (rebalance) doubles and triples for a little more home run potential and little fewer outs that get to that spot,” he said.
Asked if he agreed with a theory that this was the biggest offseason change the Royals made, Mack didn’t want to minimize the addition of players such as Lane Thomas and Collins and essentially disagreed … but put it this way:
“I think it’s definitely in the mix (as the biggest change) because it can impact every single player on the roster,” he said. “It probably adds up to some degree into that category.”
As Sherman pondered the potential impact, he thought in terms of an investment that should provide “significant surplus value.”
Just how much, of course, is an open question, rooted in research of the past and exhaustive study of the implications but entirely dependent now on the fickle ways of day-to-day baseball.
That’s why Mack is reluctant to hazard a guess as to how many more wins this could mean this season for the Royals, who are seeking to get back to the postseason after falling short last year in the wake of their 2024 breakthrough.
If he had to guess, he’d say the data suggests about an extra home run per series.
With a smile, he added, “We’re going to want that to come from people in Royals uniforms.”
While he’ll live and die with each that goes the other way, he said, he also knows this is about things evening out in the long haul.
And he believes that the cumulative results figure to favor the home team after years of their stadium being a no-go zone.