Yanks, Royals now move to an actual hitters' haven (yes, really)

When we learned that the Yankees and Royals would be facing off in the best-of-five American League Division Series, we were excited to see some of the most high-powered sluggers alive – like, of course, Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr. and Juan Soto – get a chance to hit in one of the American League’s best hitters' parks.

We are, of course, talking about Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium. What did you think we meant?

Yes, Yankee Stadium has a reputation as a pitcher’s nightmare due to its short porch in right field. But according to Statcast’s park factors, it’s actually Kauffman that’s the fourth-friendliest hitting park among regular MLB fields over the last three years – behind Coors Field (Colorado), Fenway Park (Boston) and Great American Ball Park (Cincinnati) – while Yankee Stadium is merely tied for 13th.

That, in some cases, is based on some fancy math. But it can be explained pretty simply, too, by nothing more complicated than “team OPS in 2024.” The Royals, as a hitting team, had an OPS 62 points higher at Kauffman, thanks to their .741 mark at home and .679 on the road. (The Yankees hit three points worse at home, by comparison.) It’s the third-largest home-field hitting split, and one of the two above them is, as you’d expect, the Rockies, who basically play on the moon.

Of course, batters always tend to do a little better at home and worse on the road. (To be exact, that's 17 points of OPS better across the Majors this year.) If it were just that, then the Royals pitching staff would be expected to do better at home, too, against visiting batters. Except, no: Kansas City pitchers allowed an OPS 51 points higher at home – that’s .716 in K.C. compared with .665 when they were out of town – which is tied for the second-largest home pitching split, in terms of pitching being worse at a club’s home park.

Plus, for all the misguided talk that Judge and Soto get an imaginary boost because of short-porch Yankee Stadium homers, it’s actually Witt who has one of baseball’s largest home/road splits, thanks to his .382/.441/.676 (1.117 OPS) line at home compared with his .284/.340/.505 (.844 OPS) mark in the road grays. It happens to pitchers, too. Game 3 starter Seth Lugo posted a 3.36 ERA at home, which is fine, it's just not his elite 2.62 mark on the road.

It’s certainly true that Yankee Stadium is much, much friendlier for home runs, ranking third best in the Majors, While Kauffman ranks fourth weakest in that category. That is as you’d expect, really, given that there’s more than 8,400 additional square feet of field size at the Royals' home park, compared with in the Bronx. Yet it's true, too, that there’s a whole lot more to how a park plays than simply home runs.

Like, for example, strikeouts. It’s a lot harder to strike out in Kansas City than anywhere else.

1. Wait, strikeouts? That’s a park factor?

It sure is. There’s no park in the game that suppresses strikeouts like Kauffman Stadium does, at a massive 13% less than Major League average rate. The way park factors work is to compare a player’s performance against himself at home versus on the road, so it’s not like Yankee Stadium is just a good home run park because Judge plays there. It’s more about things like this …

Royals batters, 2024

• Home: 18% K rate
• Road: 21% K rate

… and this …

Seth Lugo, 2024

• Home: 19% K rate
• Road: 25% K rate

… and that …

Bobby Witt Jr., 2024

• Home: 12% K rate
• Road: 18% K rate

… and this too …

Maikel Garcia, 2024

• Home: 14% K rate
• Road: 19% K rate

… and on and on. It’s not one-size-fits-all, of course; Salvador Perez actually struck out more at home this year (21%) than on the road (18%).

But it’s not new, either, because "The K" has suppressed strikeouts by 10 to 20% for decades. The 2015 champion Royals struck out 15% of the time at home, and 17% on the road. The dreadful 106-loss 2005 Royals? 15% at home, and 18% on the road. Pick any three-year period in the Wild Card era, and you’ll find Kauffman being a place where strikeouts are down. From 1999-2001, for example? The strikeout factor there was 84, where 100 is "average," and that means that the strikeouts were suppressed by 16% – or second most in MLB.

How, though, can a park prevent strikeouts from happening? That gets a little more speculative.

It could, for example, be about an excellent batter’s eye or stadium lighting that helps hitters pick up the ball. It could be something environmental, that makes the pitches themselves easier to hit – and while there’s not clear evidence that this is happening in Kansas City, it’s worth noting that it does have the fourth-highest elevation of any park.

It could also be an approach factor, considering that the enormous outfield makes it difficult to homer there. (The 408-foot average home run distance at Kauffman is the longest of any non-Coors park, which tells you a lot more about the oomph it takes to actually get one out than it does about the ball carrying there.) That dynamic might motivate players to cut down their swings and simply get bat on the ball.

On the other hand, Royals hitters themselves actually swing slightly harder at home than they do on the road, which could be an indicator either that they see the ball better and have more confidence, or that this isn’t actually the answer either way.

We don’t know, for certain, why The K park suppresses whiffs. We just know it does, and has, for decades. Even George Brett, who last played in 1993, struck out 162 more times on the road in his career despite taking 71 fewer road plate appearances.

2. What about all those hits that aren’t homers?

Kauffman is “a graveyard,” former Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas told The Athletic back in 2018, and you can see why he, as a power hitter, felt that way. As a member of the Royals, Moustakas had 80 regular-season homers on the road but only 59 at home. Overall, though, the numbers told a different story: As a Royal, Moustakas had a .735 OPS at home and a .742 OPS on the road.

That’s where all the extra ground to cover -- second only to Coors Field -- comes into play. If you want to go back to the park factors, then over the last three years, The K ranks (again, where 100 is league average) …

• Singles: 107 (tied-3rd)
• Doubles: 114 (3rd)
• Triples: 168 (3rd)

Put another way, over the last three seasons, the park had 3,823 non-homer hits, third most in the Majors, and over 800 more than 29th-place Yankee Stadium had. It’s certainly true that some of those missing singles, doubles and triples in the Bronx were lost simply because they went over the fence and became homers. On the other hand, the glaring difference in Batting Average on Balls In Play – i.e., what rate of non-homer batted balls became hits? – between Kauffman’s .305 (fourth-highest) and Yankee Stadium’s .271 (dead last) is hard to ignore.

It comes down to this: Yankee Stadium's advantage in producing home runs does not overcome K.C.'s advantage in suppressing strikeouts and creating all the non-homer types of hits.

“It’s going to be electric,” Witt said about returning to Kansas City for Games 3 and 4. “... Going back home is going to be a lot of fun. Get the boys right, getting hot at the right time. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

It will be. It will be fun. It's also going to be a place where you might see some action, even if "action" doesn't mean "home runs." It's a good place to hit the ball. There's more than one way to be a good hitter's park.