It’s difficult to view this season as anything other than a step back for the Kansas City Royals. After cracking the postseason a year ago behind MVP candidate Bobby Witt Jr., phenomenal pitching and good health, they’ll surely — despite not being mathematically eliminated — miss the dance in 2025.
This week could’ve (should’ve?) provided a massive opportunity to cement themselves in the playoff picture with a three-game set against the Seattle Mariners, who are vying for an AL West title or the final Wild Card spot.
Instead, KC finds itself 6.5 games back with 12 to go, trailing both Cleveland and Texas among clubs on the outside looking in. Throwing the standings out the window, making a case for the Royals as one of the six best teams in the Junior Circuit would require some serious delirium.
They own a -12 run differential and 36-49 record against opponents who are better than .500. They’ve gone through prolonged droughts both offensively and in the win column itself. Their roster features one of the best players in the sport and one of the worst bottom-thirds of any lineup in baseball. To put a cherry on top, Kansas City’s health fortunes from 2024 flipped with the entire Opening Day pitching rotation landing on the shelf at varying points, most notably ace Cole Ragans missing the entire second half of the season (barring a late return, which still does not compute for me).
In spite of all that, they entered September with a shot. A long shot, but a shot.
As the year winds to a close and fans turn their attention to the gridiron, a few positives stand out.
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Immediately cheating a bit here with a two-for-one, but the Royals witnessed massive breakthroughs from a pair of players who are set to wear Royal Blue for the long haul.
Maikel Garcia’s third full MLB season was nothing short of a revelation. In his age 23 and 24 campaigns, Garcia provided capable glovework at the hot corner and served as a reliable backup to Witt at shortstop while stealing 60 combined bases across 2023 and 2024.
But the bat was a different story. After slashing .272/.323/.358 in his rookie season, KC tested his hand at the leadoff spot in 2024 — a downright failure that saw Garcia post a 71 wRC+ as the Royals finished with the worst production from the No. 1 spot in the batting order across MLB. Through those two full seasons, Garcia owned just a .300 OBP and .094 ISO while walking a meager 7% of the time. He limited strikeouts decently at a 19.1% clip and amassed 3.4 fWAR, entirely on the back of his defense and baserunning.
Entering 2025, without the weight of leadoff expectations, Garcia tweaked his mechanics at the plate to improve both his timing and balance in the box. Those changes led to a .293/.357/.464 slash through 148 games with 16 homers, 71 runs, 70 RBI and a 125 wRC+, launching himself to the upper-tier of third basemen in the AL if not across baseball. Paired with 23 stolen bases and defense that took off as the season went along, Garcia’s entrenched as an All-Star candidate and member of KC’s core heading into 2026.
Garcia’s always flashed traits that teased an above-average hitter, including top-quartile average exit velocities, elite chase and whiff rates, an ability to square up the baseball on contact and solid maximum exit velocities considering his stature at 6-foot-1, 180 pounds.
He capitalized on those qualities this season, offering proof of concept on his profile while improving his walk rate to 9.1%, lifting the baseball more often to increase damage and providing a reliable source of production for an offense that ebbed and flowed around him.
As Garcia found a new stratosphere in year three, rookie Noah Cameron hit the ground running. Following a debut that saw the southpaw carry a no-hitter into the late innings in Tampa Bay, Cameron later proved himself worthy of a permanent place in the Royals’ rotation. He’s up to 127 MLB innings with a 2.98 ERA and shiny 1.09 WHIP, leaning on his knack for limiting free passes and hard contact behind a five-pitch mix.
He’s attacked opponents in his first crack at the Show with a soft but well-commanded four-seamer, true cutter, 12-6 curveball, righty-killing changeup and soft cutter-ish slider. Working from a high slot, Cameron’s north-south movement profile coalesces nicely and keeps hitters off-balance as he mixes his repertoire with those five pitches ranging between 15-27% usage.
We’ll likely touch more on Cameron in the offseason, but to take a leap beyond reliable mid- or back-end starter, he’ll need to discover more chase and whiff, perhaps by adding a sweeper to complement his current arsenal with a breaker that works horizontally.
No complaints, though — he’s provided much-needed support for a banged up staff and should be firmly locked in for the Opening Day five in 2026 behind Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha and Kris Bubic.
If you’re new here and taking advantage of this week’s free posts, know that most of the work centers around data (duh) and allowing the numbers to do the talking. But to tell the story of 2025 — from a glass-half-full perspective — you have to take a step back from the granular details.
JJ Picollo has now weaved together three consecutive summer trade deadlines with monumental wins, earning the faith of Royals fans that a more “transactional” organization can find value on the margins.
In 2023, he dealt reclamation reliever Aroldis Chapman (now cementing himself as — again — one of the best closers in baseball with Boston) for Ragans, who at the time was viewed as an injury-prone fireballer and lottery ticket for a club in need of pitching. Of course, Ragans proved to be much more than that, flashing elite upside late in 2023 before blooming into a Cy Young contender a season ago.
While 2024 didn’t feature an organization-altering swap, Picollo did piece together deals for fireman Lucas Erceg, who shored up a shoddy bullpen; swingman Michael Lorenzen; infielder Paul DeJong to add a spark to the lineup; and reliver Hunter Harvey, whose injury woes weren’t unforeseen but offered a worthy gamble as a shutdown weapon when his back (rarely) held up.
It’s now three-up, three-down in 2025. Kansas City dealt fan favorite backup catcher Freddy Fermin for starters Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek, each of whom has already proven to be worth the cost of sacrificing from a position of depth on their own — let alone as a packaged pair. Minor league reliever Evan Sisk and first baseman Callan Moss went to Pittsburgh for lefty Bailey Falter, another effort to fuel the system with arms in competition for spots next season.
In terms of the future, the Royals’ moves for Mike Yastrzemski, Adam Frazier and Randal Grichuk aren’t impactful — each is (likely) a free agent this offseason — but were minor swings in which KC didn’t give up much to inject some life into the 26-man roster heading into the backstretch of 2025.
My excitement for Bergert cannot be tamed, regardless of a couple shaky recent outings. There’s untapped upside that can be unearthed with a full offseason program in the organization with a chance to get the best out of his tantalizing talent. Kolek is a bit more of a floor play, offering a security blanket for inevitable injuries or offseason trades for bats. It’s a third victorious summer for Picollo and the front office, indicating a strength for the Royals moving forward.
This goes hand-in-hand with a successful front office. You may be weary of the stadium negotiations, or wish Kansas City could compete in free agency with the Mets, Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox and Giants.
They can’t and never will.
But they can win on the margins, and they can win financially with an ownership group that doesn’t quibble over pennies. In May, the Royals released Chris Stratton and Hunter Renfroe, paying off the remainder of $4.5 million and $7.5 million salaries, respectively. The moves may have come later than you’d hoped, but they came nonetheless and perhaps earlier than roughly half the clubs around the league would’ve pulled the trigger.
We’ve also witnessed consecutive summers of John Sherman and the ownership group greenlighting additional payroll at the trade deadline, giving Picollo the flexibility needed to improve the club both in the short-term and longer view. The payroll has risen — sometimes drastically — in each season since Sherman purchased the Royals.
I’m aware this is not a universally held opinion. Actually, I’m curious what others think of the Royals ownership group after a few seasons at the helm. There remain choppy waters for a small-market club that will miss the postseason for the *checks notes* first year in a row — hey, that’s much better than sitting out October for the first 21 years of my life!
Kansas City is on the right track organizationally. It’s trending toward stability with a deeper pipeline of talent, tactically savvy front office and willing ownership.
Check back later this week for the bad news.
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