{"id":2233859,"date":"2026-01-14T01:58:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T01:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2233859"},"modified":"2026-01-14T01:58:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T01:58:50","slug":"royals-of-past-present-share-thoughts-on-kauffman-stadiums-fences-moving-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-of-past-present-share-thoughts-on-kauffman-stadiums-fences-moving-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals of past, present share thoughts on Kauffman Stadium\u2019s fences moving in"},"content":{"rendered":"

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – The Kansas City Royals are making a significant change that will impact half of their games for the next half-decade.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Royals announced they will move the fences in and lower the wall height at Kauffman Stadium, in an effort to make the ballpark more neutral to power and increase home runs.<\/p>\n

With the change coming into play this season, Royals players of past and present shared their thoughts on its impact on the game.<\/p>\n

First baseman Vinnie Pasquantino, one of the players who slugged a career-high 32 home runs in 2025 and could\u2019ve had more if not for the most spacious outfield in Major League Baseball, shared a thoughtful response on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease don\u2019t read this if you don\u2019t care,\u201d Pasquantino opened his post<\/a> with. \u201cThis is too long and after I wrote it I felt dumb but I\u2019ll still put it out there. At the end of the day our job is to win games, that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pasquantino, a 28-year-old who enters his fifth season in Kansas City in 2026, had several balls turn into doubles or outs last year that would\u2019ve instead been home runs in the new dimensions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very curious about how this is going to play out in multiple ways,\u201d Pasquantino\u2019s post continued. \u201cAnd honestly mostly from a data perspective. The K was the 6th most hitter friendly ballpark according to the park factor. <\/p>\n

\u201cHitters like hitting at the K because the visuals are nice but everyone also agrees it\u2019s been a pitchers\u2019 park forever,\u201d Pasquantino said. \u201cWhat this means is you can\u2019t hit cheap homers… The data firmly supports it being a hitters paradise because you can get more singles doubles and triples.\u201d<\/p>\n

Royals Vice President of Research & Development and assistant general manager Dr. Daniel Mack told reporters at Kauffman Stadium Tuesday that the new fences will likely result in roughly one extra home run per home series.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something Pasquantino said he\u2019s curious to see play out in relation to the park factor, which figures to be negatively impacted with fewer triples being in play. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll in all I truly believe hitters\/pitchers alike just want fairness but we play one of the only sports where the field size changes and I think that\u2019s one of the cooler things about our game,\u201d Pasquantino said. \u201cI just rambled a lot but I think it\u2019s cool the Royals were willing to make these changes to make it more of a neutral ballpark.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/div>
The Royals announced they are moving in the outfield walls at Kauffman Stadium<\/span>(Kansas City Royals)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former Royals infielder\/outfielder Whit Merrifield was more succinct with his thoughts on the change, calling it \u201cAbsolutely massive news for hitters in KC!!\u201d in a post on X and saying he thought the park gave Kansas City hitters a disadvantage when compared to their peers across MLB.<\/p>\n

Drew Butera, who spent time in Kansas City and was part of the World Series-winning 2015 team, took a joking approach to the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have had at least 1 more home run,\u201d he said on X.<\/a><\/p>\n

General manager J.J. Picollo said the organization held a team meeting and shared details of their findings with the group. Dr. Mack said Tuesday the Royals determined superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. has been one of the most negatively impacted players from the ballpark and with shorter walls could see an uptick in his power numbers, specifically on balls driven to the opposite field.<\/p>\n

How the ballpark plays with the new conditions now becomes one of the top storylines of the 2026 Royals season.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 KCTV. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kctv5.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – The Kansas City Royals are making a significant change that will impact half of their games for the next half-decade. On Tuesday, the Royals announced they will move the fences in and lower the wall height at Kauffman Stadium, in an effort to make the ballpark more neutral to power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[91466,432174,384289,432175,102808,402967],"class_list":["post-2233859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-royalty","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-dr-daniel-mack","tag-j-j-picollo","tag-kauffman-stadium-new-fences","tag-vinnie-pasquantino","tag-whit-merrifield"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2233859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2233860,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233859\/revisions\/2233860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2233859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2233859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2233859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}