KC Royals: The dream dimensions of a new ballpark

The KC Royals have shown off new renders of both North Kansas City and the Downtown stadium locations. Whether you are a fan of a new stadium or not, we should at least discuss what the dimensions of a new stadium should look like from a numbers perspective.

How could a new KC Royals field look like?

For as long as Kauffman has been around it has always been a pitcher's heaven due to its dimensions. Said dimensions are 330 ft to the left field pole, 387 to left center, 410 to dead center, 387 to right center, and finally 330 to the right field pole. While having one of the biggest fields in the league Kauffman in recent years has turned more into a hitters field.

Using park factors (a stat that determines what parks are easier/harder to hit at), Kauffman has the fourth highest park factor at 103. Not ideal for having the dimensions the Royals have at home, but it does limit homeruns for better or worse having a home run park factor of 81 for second best in the league. Now park factors have some limits and only take the results of plate appearances, meaning it could be skewed based on talent.

In much harsher terms, from 2021 to this year the Royals have been very bad at everything which has made Kauffman more of a hitters park. In park factors for hits (minus home runs), Kauffman has the second worst singles observed (term used by Savant), fifth worst doubles observed, and fourth worst triples observed. In terms of BBs and strikeouts Kauffman has observed fewer strikeouts and about average walks compared to other fields. While this is all pretty bad it mostly lies on the fact that Royals pitching has been less than good over the past couple seasons.

So this begs the question and the reason for this article, what are the "dream" dimensions for a new field? In this writer's research, he used multiple fields and some aspects of each for the dimensions. The three fields were, ironically, all AL West teams in the Astros, Mariners, and Rangers.

As referenced earlier, Kauffman's dimensions are expansive and that has led to many hitters not playing as good as they should (due to park factors, mainly home runs). So to fix that, as a part of team bring the fences in, the ideal dimensions would be something close to: Left foul pole 330 ft, left-center 377, center field 400, right-center 380, and the right foul pole being 326. With this as well as lowering the wall height from 9 ft (at Kauffman) to 8 ft, and to 7 feet from the right foul pole to right-center this new field would be "average" dimension-wise.

This is similar to Safeco Field with the dimensions and overall design with a little bit of Minute Made Park with the right field fence. You may be asking why I chose those three AL West team's fields to be the inspiration. Well, it is based on more stats.

If we look at expected home runs by park we see that a good amount of Royals players hit more home runs in these parks. We will be looking at three players who would potentially perform better in a field like Safeco. Bobby Witt Jr. has 26 home runs on the year and building his way to a 30-30 season, in Kauffman his expected number would be 23, in Safeco the number is 26, Minute Maid is 23, and Globe Life Park is 27. Not staggering numbers, but BWJ also hits home runs mainly to left-center or center field which for parks like Minute Maid he will struggle (has a 25 wall to left-center).

Following BWJ is Salvador Perez who, in the same order as with BWJ numbers, at Kauffman has an expected home run count of 18, 28 in Safeco, 19 in Minute Maid, and 24 in Globe Life. MJ Melendez also has numbers like this with 12 at Kauffman, 17 at Safeco, 16 at Minute Maid, and 19 at Globe Life. That trend isn't only for these three because just about every hitter has numbers like this (especially the lefties).

With talks of the new stadiums continuing into the offseason the KC Royals should look at trying to make the new field more balanced to help the talent they have as the pitching hasn't been helped by Kauffman (overall lack of talent) and lefty hitters are losing power. While Kauffman is a great stadium, in this writer's opinion, it would be nice to have a stadium that is more average to display whatever talent is here, if that makes sense.