{"id":2236297,"date":"2026-01-15T17:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2236297"},"modified":"2026-01-15T17:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:35:13","slug":"wind-at-kauffman-stadium-has-wreaked-havoc-on-royals-hitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wind-at-kauffman-stadium-has-wreaked-havoc-on-royals-hitters\/","title":{"rendered":"Wind at Kauffman Stadium has wreaked havoc on Royals hitters"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Baseball fans of a certain age may recall an epic Cubs-Phillies game during the 1979 season at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n

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Philadelphia won 23-22<\/a> in 10 innings and the teams combined for 11 home runs thanks to a strong wind that was blowing out that day. Even today, baseball fans know how the wind can provide a huge boost to hitters at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n

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And when the wind is blowing in, it can help the pitchers tremendously.<\/p>\n

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But do you know which ballpark has seen the most home runs prevented by the wind in recent years? It likely will come as a surprise, but it\u2019s Kauffman Stadium.<\/p>\n

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A story on the Major League Baseball website last February looked at data from the previous two major-league seasons as measured by Statcast\u2019s Weather Applied Metrics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It found 67 would-be home runs<\/a> were knocked down by the wind at Kauffman Stadium. Second on the list is Wrigley Field at 56. That\u2019s based on calculations of a ball being hit 25 feet farther (wind blowing out) or 25 feet less (wind blowing in).<\/p>\n

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The story noted 5 mph worth of wind behind a ball can add nearly 19 feet of travel distance.<\/p>\n

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At Wrigley Field, the wind giveth and it taketh away, but in Kansas City just two home runs were wind-aided. That means the wind effect at The K resulted in negative-65 home runs, per the MLB story. No. 2 on the list of ballparks was Wrigley Field at negative-43.<\/p>\n

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Data for the 2025 season hasn\u2019t been made public, but the Royals are keenly aware of the wind\u2019s effect on hitters at Kauffman Stadium. It\u2019s one reason for the team\u2019s decision to move in the fences at The K<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Daniel Mack, the Royals\u2019 assistant general manager for research and development, mentioned the wind during Tuesday\u2019s news conference.<\/p>\n

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\u201cObviously, we know the park\u2019s dimensions, right? It\u2019s a top five ballpark by outfield square footage, but there were other things we\u2019ve got to bring in to account as well,\u201d Mack said. \u201cWe have access to more meteorological data than we\u2019ve had in the past, which has given us an understanding of how wind patterns play at The K.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s one of those ballparks where the wind, on average, hurts us. It\u2019s as if our park plays with the walls about 5 feet further back on average. And as everyone who knows what a Midwest weather pattern looks like, we have really cold and really hot days, which, in some form, plays with the fly ball production on our ballpark quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Why the wind affects hitters at The K<\/h2>\n

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The cool spring air and the hot and humid days of August can have an effect on a baseball.<\/p>\n

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You rarely hear players talk about the wind at Kauffman Stadium, but the data shows it wreaks havoc on hitters. Why is that?<\/p>\n

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For starters, Kauffman Stadium itself has little to block the wind.<\/p>\n

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The Royals know more now because they have weather stations at Kauffman Stadium. That has helped the team get precise information rather than relying on readings in other parts of Kansas City.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of interesting value from that,\u201d Mack said. \u201cBut it was an opportunity for us to kind of dive even deeper for a very specific problem. Instead of being player centric, it was park centric, with the players being, sort of the actors on that front. And we then sort of tried to understand what consistency looked like across all of Major League Baseball, so we could see how other parks play.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut one of the things that happens for us is those wind patterns in particular, are different enough compared to other parks, primarily because of some of the open spaces with the CrownVision in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s why the Royals hope the fences being moved in will help offset the wind issues that have hampered their batters in the past.<\/p>\n

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This story was originally published January 15, 2026 at 9:59 AM.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Related Stories from Kansas City Star<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pete Grathoff<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Kansas City Star<\/span><\/p>\n

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From covering the World Series to the World Cup, Pete Grathoff has done a little bit of everything since joining The Kansas City Star in 1997. <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\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.kansascity.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baseball fans of a certain age may recall an epic Cubs-Phillies game during the 1979 season at Wrigley Field. Philadelphia won 23-22 in 10 innings and the teams combined for 11 home runs thanks to a strong wind that was blowing out that day. Even today, baseball fans know how the wind can provide a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2167928,"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":[432333,432662,43627,311235,432661],"class_list":["post-2236297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-fences","tag-home-runs-prevented","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kauffman-stadium","tag-wind-effects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/See-photos-from-Royals-broadcaster-Denny-Matthews-wedding.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236297","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=2236297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2236298,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236297\/revisions\/2236298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2167928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2236297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2236297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2236297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}