What’s it like hitting and pitching at Kauffman Stadium?

I asked some players the question

A funny thing about Camden Yards in Baltimore: it keeps changing sizes.

The original ballpark was a home run hitters’ dream, with a short, seven-foot tall left field wall and distance of only 364 feet at the left-center field marker. In 2001, the Orioles kept the outfield dimensions but moved home plate back seven feet. In 2022, the Orioles moved the wall up to 13 feet and back to 384 at the marker, creating a right-angle corner at 398 feet in left-center field along the way; fans dubbed this “Walltimore.” And this year, Walltimore fell after only three years, with the Orioles lowering the wall height to eight feet and moving it in to 374 feet.

“I think that’s really what makes baseball unique,” Kyle Isbel told me. “It’s kind of the only sport that’s really like that. Obviously basketball: the same court dimensions. Football: the same field dimensions. The cool thing about baseball, it’s different.”

I wasn’t talking to Isbel about Camden Yards specifically—it’s just a fascinating illustration of a weird part of baseball. Rather, I was chatting with the Royals center fielder about Kauffman Stadium, the one with the cavernous outfield and propensity for limiting home runs. I talked to Isbel as well as Drew Waters, Lucas Erceg, and Bobby Witt Jr. about the stadium and how they approach playing in Kauffman Stadium as opposed to other stadiums.

Why this question? Well, for one, Kauffman Stadium is just not long for this world in the grand scheme of things. The Royals have signaled for years their intention to move downtown at the end of the current lease, and while a downtown stadium seems like less and less of a possibility right now, they’re going to move somewhere a few years from now.

And two, Kauffman Stadium is just a fascinating place. The stadium’s famous outfield is by some measures the biggest or second-biggest outfield by total acreage. In fact, the Royals moved the outfield dimensions in 10 feet for the 1995 season to counteract this, a decision that the Royals reversed for the 2004 season. Yet it is the second-best park to hit in in Major League Baseball.

Of course, it is really, really hard to hit a home run in Kauffman Stadium—it’s the fourth-hardest park to hit a homer in, actually. Kauffman is all about the doubles and triples. So, the question: do hitters modify their approach for the roomy Kauffman outfield versus, say, the short Yankee Stadium porch?

The answer was a pretty consistent “no.” Bobby Witt Jr. and Drew Waters mentioned the same core reason, which is that hitting home runs are a byproduct of trying to put good swings on the ball—which has nothing to do with the ballpark.

“I think we have little control of where the ball actually goes when you’re trying to hit 98 MPH,” Waters told me. “I think you’re just trying to make hard contact and wherever it goes, it goes. Obviously with a bigger field, some balls that may be caught here may not be somewhere else, but I wouldn’t necessarily say you’re trying to change what you’re trying to do in the box.”

“I feel like Kaufman, when it’s hot, it almost flies better than it does yesterday,” Witt said after being asked specifically about the home run flurry in Baltimore. “So it’s something that you can’t really try to do. Homers are almost by accident. You miss it, [trying to hit] a line drive, it’s homer. So it’s one of those things where you just have an approach and go up there and take a hack and see what happens.”

Isbel also brought up that both teams have the same advantage, and that hitting in different parks is just how it goes. “I don’t really have a preference,” Isbel said. “It’s the same for both teams who’s playing the same game at the same time.”

Lucas Erceg agreed that thinking about where you pitch is not the way to go. “I tend not to really think about different stadiums having different dimensions, with the walls being different and all that stuff,” Erceg told me. “I’m primarily a sinker ball pitcher, so I like to keep a ball on the ground. So that kind of stuff doesn’t really affect me. I try not to let it affect my mindset, my process and all that stuff.”

As Witt and Waters said, it’s hard to care about where you are when you’re trying to hit near-triple digit fastballs (and then, you know, those pesky sliders). And as far as taking a walk or striking out? That’s a whole different ballgame with different things going on. I asked Isbel if walking was easier in certain ballparks.

“I would say yes,” Isbel said. “I don’t really think it’s a batter’s eye thing. I think it’s just more the comfortability of home versus away. You see the same backdrop here for 81 games or whatever it is a year, rather than going to somewhere where you have different visuals and that plays a big factor.”

That doesn’t fully explain why stadiums have higher and lower walk rate factors, but as Isbel said, there’s a lot of stuff going on. Baseball is hard enough—you do what you can and let the chips fall where they may. Stadiums may have an effect on the game, but not on how players approach it.