Kauffman’s New Dimensions Will Win Bobby Witt Jr. an MVP
The Royals are moving in the outfield wall at Kauffman Stadium. No one stands to benefit more than their star player.
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After they achieved their first playoff berth in nearly a decade during the 2024 season, the future of the Kansas City Royals seemed very bright. They had the early makings of a good, young core that could carry them deep into October year after year, which had fans across the league very excited.
However, the 2025 season had a different story in mind. The Royals finished four games worse than their record the year prior, which ultimately put them five games away from a second straight postseason appearance.
A big reason for this was their offensive struggles and their inability to slug the baseball. The Royals finished as a bottom-eight offense in wRC+, and their 159 home runs were the fifth-worst mark in the league.
This offseason, the Royals hoped to keep building up their offense, and this could ultimately happen without any sizable external additions. Two weeks into the New Year, the Royals announced they’d be moving in their outfield wall a considerable amount in order to help boost the offense.
These changes are going to have massive implications for multiple hitters in their lineup, but there’s one player that stands above the rest: Bobby Witt Jr.
Considering he’s finished in the top five of MVP voting in back-to-back seasons, there’s a very good chance that Kauffman Stadium’s new dimensions allow Witt to take home the award in 2026. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at how these changes will elevate Witt’s game.
Breaking Down the Dimension Changes
Despite featuring a slightly above league-average run environment, Kauffman Stadium has generally played as a neutral ballpark for hitters and pitchers. This balance largely stems from its tendency to keep fly balls in play, making it one of the most difficult parks for hitters to leave the yard.
According to Statcast’s park factors, Kauffman Stadium has been a well below league-average environment for home runs over the last few seasons.
With 100 being a league-average mark, Kauffman Stadium came in at 85 in home run factor from 2023-25. In short, this means fly balls were noticeably less likely to leave the ballpark in Kansas City as opposed to other fields around the league.
According to Statcast, Kauffman Stadium has the second-longest average fence distance, a factor the Royals are going to correct with this move. As a result of such long fences, the Royals’ playing field also has the second-most square footage in baseball.
According to renderings provided by the Royals, we can get an idea of the significance of these changes. Both foul poles will be moved inward nine feet, which should allow for some big offensive improvements itself. The left field and right field walls will follow suit, as they’ll also move in nine feet apiece.
Left-center and right-center are where things change more drastically. Both of these walls will be moved by 10 feet, which could have tremendous implications for homers in Kauffman Stadium. The only area untouched is straightaway center field, which will remain at 410 feet, the third-longest point in the sport.
The wall height is also being adjusted, with most areas in the park shrinking from 10 feet to eight and a half feet.
While these changes will undoubtedly improve the number of home runs hit at Kauffman Stadium, the fear is that they’ll have a more negative impact on the pitching staff. According to the Royals GM J.J. Picollo, this won’t be the case.
When asked about the changes, Picollo said, “Our goal here isn’t to have an offensive ballpark, it’s to have a very fair ballpark. We don’t want it to turn into a bandbox, and every ball up in the air turns into a home run. We just want hitters to be rewarded when they hit the ball well, particularly in the gaps.”
With this move, the organization is aiming to strike a fair balance between offense and defense without fundamentally altering the park’s identity. If this works to their favor, many hitters will be heavily rewarded for their best contact, including but not limited to superstar Bobby Witt Jr.
Witt’s Relationship With Kauffman
On the surface, it may be tough to imagine Witt having any issues hitting in Kauffman Stadium. After all, he’s hit 30 or more homers in two of his four big league seasons, and he became the youngest player in franchise history to reach the 100-homer mark this past year.
However, Kauffman Stadium has worked against Witt pretty heavily. While the power he’s showcased throughout his first few seasons is very impressive, he could unlock another level of pop with the park’s new dimensions.
Statcast’s expected home runs metric offers a clear window into just how much Kauffman Stadium has suppressed Witt’s power potential, showing that if he had played all of his career games there, he would have hit fewer home runs than in any other ballpark across the league.
In fact, if he had played exclusively at Kauffman Stadium, Witt would’ve never eclipsed the 30-homer mark. Out of all 30 parks across the league, Kauffman Stadium is the only place where Witt wouldn’t have reached this mark at least one time.
Over at FanGraphs, Ben Clemens wrote a captivating piece breaking down the new dimensions. Most importantly, he used his own model to predict how many more home runs different players would have finished with in 2025 if they had used the new dimensions. According to his model, Witt would’ve added an extra three home runs.
In the same story, Clemens calculated the number of home runs hitters would have gained if the new dimensions had been implemented since 2015. Witt finished second on the leaderboard with 15 homers gained, only sitting behind Salvador Perez’s 25 homers gained. Despite being just an estimate, these 15 homers could’ve had a huge impact on some of Witt’s end-of-season numbers.
After looking at some videos myself, I fully believe Clemens when he writes how much of an impact the distance adjustments will have on Witt’s game. Below are the five most egregious examples or near-miss home runs I could find when digging a little deeper.
It’s important to note that the 2025 season was a down year in terms of Witt’s power, as he finished with nine fewer homers than the year prior. This was largely due to the fact that he simply didn’t hit the ball in the air as much; his fly ball rate decreased from 30.5% in 2024 to 27.9% in 2025.
If Witt can hit the ball in the air as he did in 2024, we could quickly see some more power from the 25-year-old. After all, he hit a career-high 32 home runs during that campaign, and his higher rate of fly balls was a reason for that.
If Witt can rediscover that 2024 batted-ball mix, the combination of a more fly ball-heavy approach and Kauffman’s new dimensions could unlock the most complete offensive season of his career. What once required perfect contact may soon be rewarded routinely, turning warning-track outs into home runs and strong seasons into historic ones.
Why These Changes Push Witt Into MVP Territory
Now that we’ve laid out Kauffman Stadium’s dimensions changes and how the stadium has directly affected Bobby Witt Jr.’s offensive game, it’s time to tie it all together and explain why this change could finally allow Witt to win the American League MVP.
As a thought experiment, let’s say Witt returns to his 2024 form and hits fly balls at a clip near or above 30% in 2025. This change alone would create noticeably more batted ball events that turn into home runs with a shorter outfield wall, and this change could be huge for him.
Even an extra five home runs could push Witt into the mid-to-high 30s if everything clicks for him, which could allow him to have one of the best seasons ever by a shortstop. Witt recorded 10.5 fWAR with 32 homers in 2024, and it’s very possible that an increase in power production alone could push him into having an 11 or 12 fWAR season.
This isn’t even considering the strides Witt took defensively in 2025. During his 10.5 fWAR season in 2024, Witt registered 16 OAA, which placed him near the top of the sport. However, not only was he still among the top defenders in the sport last season, but he was one of just five players to post an OAA in the 20s, and only the second shortstop in 2025 to reach that number.
If Witt’s power can see a sizable jump from Kauffman’s new dimensions, and if he continues to be one of the game’s best defenders, we may see him register one of the best shortstop seasons in baseball history. With Aaron Judge consistently posting Barry Bonds-adjacent numbers year in and year out, this level of production might be what it takes for Witt to, at long last, steal an MVP away from Judge.
All things considered, the days of Kauffman Stadium working against the young superstar are all but over, and the result could be the first Royals MVP season in nearly five decades.
Written by
Jay Staph, a huge baseball fan and stat nerd, founded and ran his own baseball writing website, BSBWrites, at just 16-years-old. With focal points around prospects,…