By Adam Gardner | June 22, 2026
There is a new dawn in Royals franchise history even as we’re reminded that the baseball gods giveth, the baseball gods taketh away.
This past week has been a true mixed bag for the Kansas City Royals. On one hand, Jac Caglianone is having his big breakout moment. But on the other hand, Bobby Witt Jr. left Thursday’s game with a knee injury.
The Royals won a home series against the St. Louis Cardinals during all of this. The highs and lows of baseball, all wrapped up into one June series for the last place team in the American League Central.
Too much of my brain energy is spent on remembering parts of TV shows and movies. For this particular weekend, I was reminded of Donald Glover as Troy Barnes from “Community” as he screams “My emotions!”
Bobby’s injury
I went golfing with my lovely wife Thursday evening after work. We played 18 holes and 9 of those were with another couple of friends and it was a great time.
Then on the drive home I popped the Royals game on the radio just in time to find out Tyler Tolbert was pinch hitting for Bobby Witt Jr. because of an apparent injury.
My emotions!
I started looking up anything I could online as soon as I got home to find out what happened. I saw that he stayed in the game right after it happened and finished the inning – that’s good news.
When Witt got to the dugout, he immediately signaled he was done – that’s bad news.
Ultimately, we all had to wait for testing done on Friday, which felt like waiting on test results for a close family member. The news was about as good as we could hope – a Grade 1 MCL sprain.
It’s a low-grade sprain and the Royals haven’t felt it necessary to put Witt on the Injured List quite yet. That could still happen, of course, but right now they’re waiting things out to see how he feels when the swelling goes down.
Anne Rogers covers the Royals for mlb.com and mentioned in her story about Witt’s injury that he’s been dealing with right knee soreness for a few weeks, but this injury isn’t connected.
Rogers also mentioned there are options for how this plays out. Witt could miss a few games but then come back and play with a brace. The Royals could put Witt on the IL.
My hope is that Witt takes a trip to the IL and takes the time to recover as much as possible during the season. The Royals are 9 games out of the AL Central on June 22 – this is a great time to be cautious with the centerpiece of the franchise.
Witt has proven to be a player who wants to take the field every day. He is the ideal shortstop and team leader. Witt does everything you could ask for on the field.
Royals manager Matt Quatraro said “It’s going to be a lot of get the swelling out of there and understand how he feels, and those conversations are going to have to be honest between all of us.”
But if Witt comes back on Monday or Tuesday and says he feels like he can play through the pain/discomfort, I hope the Royals tell him to back off of it and take more time. Don’t let Witt make things worse because he’s trying to be a good teammate.
The 2026 season is more or less a goner – KC needs to make sure Witt is 100% for 2027.
Jac busting out
Jac Caglianone destroyed Cardinals pitching this past weekend. The second-year pro and former first-round draft pick showed everybody exactly who he can be, belting 4 home runs and collecting 7 RBIs over the three-game series.
Check out this bomb from Sunday’s game:
All four home runs traveled 400+ feet. Two home runs to left-center field and two to right-center. He’s absolutely mashing the ball.
June has been Jac’s month. He’s hitting .379/.468/.742 in 18 games in June, with 7 home runs. His OPS+ this month is a ridiculous 218 – remember that 100 is league average!
That raises his season averages to .275/.349/.480 for an OPS of .829 and OPS+ of 130. This is exactly the type of player you hope for when your team picks No. 6 in the draft. He’s scorching the baseball.
If you’ve been watching Royals games the past few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly heard Ryan Lefebvre talk about the quality at bats that Jac has stacked together. There’s been several times Ryan has pointed out pitches that Jac would have previously swung at but avoided, and then Jac answered with a line drive.
Ryan’s seen a lot of baseball and he was all over Jac’s improvement even before he got white-hot. Anne Rogers gives us some numbers to back it up, too.
Cags has a 26% strikeout rate in June, down from 33.3% in March/April and 28% in May. He only has a 25.8% swing-and-miss rate in June, compared to 34.7/32.2 in the first two months.
Mastering the mental game
His mental approach is spot on right now, too, as he’s learned to simply move on to the next pitch if he does swing at something bad.
“Say a quick cuss word and move on,” Caglianone said. “Screw it, it’s over with. Also, if you know you made a bad swing decision, seven or eight times out of 10, the pitcher thinks he can get you on it again. So take the free ball after that. That’s the cat and mouse to it.”
What a terrific attitude to have and it’s certainly paying off for the young slugger. He’s made great strides this season alone, plus look at what he did in 62 games in his rookie 2025 season compared to the 72 games he’s played this year (2025 is on top, 2026 is on bottom):
Cags is giving Royals fans a shining light in a dark 2026 season. Another young hitter is helping, especially the past two weeks.
Jensen’s hot stretch
Carter Jensen has been rolling the past 10 games. He’s batting .390/.444/.707 in that time span for an OPS+ of 199.
The combination of Jensen and Caglianone both hitting the ball well at the same time is almost enough to make me jump for joy – but then I’d just throw my back out. Still, it makes me giddy.
My emotions! In a good way!
I mentioned in Thursday’s post that what I’d really like to see from Jensen is an increase in his on-base percentage, which was at just .302. He had a much higher OBP across two waves in the minor leagues in 2025, so it is a fair request.
Jensen obliged over the weekend, recording 5 hits and 2 walks against the Cardinals to raise his OBP to .312 for the season. I don’t expect that type of progress every series, but over the long haul he seems like the type of hitter that can work pitchers and get on base.
He’s currently riding a 12-game hitting streak and belted an opposite-field home run on Sunday. I love it.
Plenty to watch for
Sure, the 2026 season isn’t going the way we all hoped in terms of wins and losses, but there is still plenty to watch for this Royals season.
Will Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen continue their development? Will Bobby Witt Jr. be healthy and able to continue doing Bobby Witt Jr. things? What will Vinnie Pasquantino look like when he returns from his hand injury? When will Salvador Perez set the new franchise record for home runs?
It’s not exactly what we hoped for back in March, but if you recalibrate your expectations then there is still a lot to be excited about. And that doesn’t mean giving the team a free pass for having a terrible season – it just means enjoying the team in a different way.
