By Adam Gardner / March 5, 2026
The Royals have a few Spring Training games under their belt which means it’s not too long until the 2026 season officially begins. Before we jump fully into 2026, though, we should take a look back at the good and the bad from 2025 and what that might mean for the upcoming season.
Good — Maikel Garcia
The Royals appear to have found the companion to Bobby Witt Jr. on the left side of the infield. Maikel Garcia put together a 5.8 WAR season in 2025, adding punch to an offense that didn’t have consistent threats all season long. For those unfamiliar with WAR, it stands for “Wins Above Replacement” and defines how much value a player added compared to a replacement level player. So the Royals gained nearly 6 more wins with Garcia compared to a generic replacement player.
For context, www.baseball-reference.com uses this scale for WAR:
8+ is MVP quality;
5-8 is All Star quality;
2-5 is starter quality;
0-2 is reserve quality;
And less than 0 is replacement level.
Through 123 games in 2023, Garcia accumulated 1.1 WAR, then followed that up with 1.2 WAR in a full 2024 season. Last year’s big jump shouldn’t be a fluke, either, as Garcia was in his age 25 season and second full season in the Major Leagues. This seems like a young player finding his footing and the Royals agree – they signed Garcia to a five-year extension in December 2025. According to MLB.com’s Anne Rogers, the deal is worth $57.5 million with a possibility of maxing out at about $85 million if all escalators hit and the club option for 2031 is picked up.
This means the Royals left side of the infield is locked in through at least 2030. It’s not only great to have Garcia’s bat and speed in the lineup, but he earned a Gold Glove at third base in 2025. Couple that with Witt winning the Platinum Glove as the best overall defender in the American League last season, and the Royals have exceptional defenders with tremendous range and arm strength. Every pitcher that takes the mound for Kansas City, and every pitcher the Royals pursue in free agency the next few offseasons, will know Garcia and Witt have the left side locked down.
We’ll see what exactly manager Matt Quatraro does with the batting order in 2026, but we know Garcia and Witt will be in the top half of the lineup, and the fewer uncertainties a team has, the better.
Bad — Extended Slumps
If there’s one thing the worst Royals teams have had in common, it’s a really bad stretch of play that tanks the entire season. The 2025 Royals certainly don’t fall into the category of worst Royals teams, but their month of June ruined their chances at the postseason.
Kansas City lost six games in a row on three separate occasions last year: the first was in April but then they did it twice more during the month of June, finishing that dreadful month with an 8-18 record. Even worse, KC was just 1-12 at home in June, somehow beating the eventual-champion Dodgers on June 28.
For a team that finished the season with an 82-80 record, a different June could have had the team in the postseason for the second-straight year. It feels helpless when your favorite team hits a skid like that as a fan and I can’t imagine it feels any better for the players and management.
There’s a common baseball saying that everyone wins one-third of their games, everyone loses one-third of their games, and what happens in the other one-third separates winners from losers. June 2025 killed that key one-third of the Royals season.
Good — Starting Pitching
I missed the first Royals heydays of the 1970s and 1980s – it’s not my fault I was born in 1984 – which means I missed watching the great starting pitchers the Royals had on those teams. Talk to some old timers and they’ll surely mention Paul Splittorff, Charlie Leibrandt, Dennis Leonard, Steve Busby and Bret Saberhagen.
The Royals found it difficult to put together strong starting pitching after those players retired or moved onto other franchises. You’d have a great pitcher here and there, like Kevin Appier or Zack Greinke, but for a good chunk of the 1990s and 2000s we just had to hope to outscore the opposition. I have specific memories of being satisfied with a Kyle Davies start if he only gave up 4 runs in 5 innings on 100 pitches.
Even the back-to-back World Series teams weren’t built on excellent starting pitching but rather were famous for their bullpen arms. Not to discredit guys like Danny Duffy, Edinson Volquez, and Yordano Ventura – those guys were really solid and the bullpen wouldn’t have had leads to hold onto if the starters didn’t hand them leads to begin with.
But the most recent Royals teams have leaned on their starters’ arms more than the past. The 2024 group was special as Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans were dominant, and Brady Singer and Michael Wacha provided excellent depth to the rotation. This past season didn’t hit those highs – Ragans dealing with injuries and only pitching 61.2 innings was a big blow – but the starting pitching was still solid.
Wacha was steady again, Kris Bubic had a terrific first half before dealing with his own injury, and the emergence of Noah Cameron was wonderful. It’s encouraging that the staff dealt with several injuries in 2025 but was still a strength of the team. Looking at 2026, the Royals have a lot of starting pitching depth on paper. With pitchers, it’s typically a matter of “when” not “if” when it comes to injuries, so we’ll have to see how things shake out as far as who is available. But the Royals at least appear to be set up for another strong year from their starting pitchers.
Bad — Lineup Length
The biggest issue with the 2025 Royals was their inability to get production from the lower half of their batting order. Opposing pitchers knew all they needed to do was get past Garcia, Witt, Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez and they could pretty much coast.
Players like Hunter Renfroe, Drew Waters, Cavan Biggio and MJ Melendez weren’t able to add enough value in the first half of the season. Jonathan India was brought in prior to the season to leadoff and lengthen the order, but it didn’t work out. In-season additions like Mike Yastrzemski and Adam Frazier provided some help, but it wasn’t enough down the stretch. Jac Caglianone proved everything he could in the minor leagues, but it didn’t translate to the Majors.
Add it all up and the Royals scored 84 fewer runs in 2025 than they did in 2024. What would have happened with an extra half-run per game? Would they have been able to surpass the 87-75 Tigers who made the postseason, or been able to take a run at the 88-74 AL Central winning Guardians? We can’t say for sure, but they certainly would have made it interesting.
The good news is Carter Jensen looked legit in his limited time at the end of the season. India and Caglianone are bounce-back candidates. I’m particularly excited for Caglianone because he hits the ball hard and if you keep hitting the ball hard, good things will happen (but we’ll get more into him in the near future). You don’t have to squint too hard to envision a 1-9 batting order that doesn’t give opposing pitchers an inning or two to coast through.
Good — Carter Jensen
Speaking of Jensen, the Kansas City, Missouri native took advantage of limited at bats late in the season with a slash line of .300/.391/.550. (If unfamiliar with a typical slash line, it’s batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage.)
Jensen is known as a strong defensive catcher but he started 2025 at Double-A Northwest Arkansas and hit well, and then did even better at Triple-A Omaha before getting a late-season callup to Kansas City. Hopefully Jensen can be the primary catcher in 2026 and continue hitting at a solid clip, allowing Salvy to keep his legs fresh through the entirety of the season.
It’s not just Royals-colored glasses that give me high hopes for Jensen; Keith Law of The Athletic named Jensen as one of the top members of the 2026 rookie class, pointing out his defensive prowess, ability to get on base and his power. MLB Network’s Greg Amsinger predicted Jensen would take home the American League Rookie of the Year award for 2026 during the network’s in-depth look at the Royals. That would be fantastic, but even a top-3 finish for the award would mean Jensen gave the Royals more punch than they had in 2025.
Yes, 2025 had its shares of ups and downs, with a few too many downs to end the season with the Royals playing in October. But the potential for an AL Central championship is visible and dreams of Royals baseball on cool October nights are dancing in my head.
