After a promising 21-16 start to the 2025 season, the 35-38 Kansas City Royals now find themselves clutching for air as they drown deeper into the American League standings. Nearly halfway into the season, the Royals project to finish with a 78-84 record, a whole eight-game step-back from last year.
General Manager Matt Quatraro has been the face of much criticism among Royals fans of late, an angst I deem somewhat warranted but not entirely justified. While Quatraro is the man at the helm with the final say, there is only so much a coach can do for players who are not able to perform up to their “potential.” Quatraro has tirelessly tweaked lineups, subbed guys in and out of the rotation, and even pulled the trigger to call up 22-year-old phenom Jac Caglianone in hopes of providing some semblance of an offensive boost, but to no avail.
To give you an idea of how underwhelming the boys in blue have been, I pulled some stats from May 10 to the day of writing this article on June 18. That’s 33 games played, which is roughly 20 percent, in other words, one-fifth of an entire MLB season. The Royals over that span hold an 11-22 record, a bottom-seven mark in the league over that time, and the worst in the division.
While they are 10th in hits and top 10 in batting average at .256, the Royals are last in Runs (102), RBI (98), HR (22), third worst in OBP at .299, and last in BB with 63, over 20 less than the next worst team. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. That’s terrible and, as a fan of the team for as long as I’ve been alive, kind of sad.
Look, I get it. Being in Kansas City, the Royals are a small-market team. They simply don’t have the financial advantage that teams do in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago to sign multiple top-tier superstars to huge contracts while also being able to fill out a complete roster. But let’s be real, nobody was talking about how being a small-market team doomed the Royals in 2015 when they won the World Series.
It’s been 10 years since then, and finally, this year, notoriety was coming back to this team. People were picking them to make a deep playoff run on the back of having one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, and the sport's next superstar talent in Bobby Witt Jr. Now, even Witt has cooled off from his hot start, averaging .282 and only 9 home runs. He’s a far cry from the Royals' biggest problems, but it stands to reason that Witt having a down stretch of play no doubt is largely impacted by the lack of help from the rest of the lineup.
35-year-old Salvador Perez might just be showing the first signs of some aging as he is having his worst batting season since 2018, and might just be getting outplayed at catcher when backup Freddy Fermin steps in from time to time. Guys who were a big part of that 21-16 start are now starting to fade back to the norm in Maikel Garcia and Jonathan India. Vinnie Pasquantino is loved by most in KC for his “Pasquatch” nickname, but he’s played more like a Yeti for much of this year with how ice-cold his swing has been. And while the 4-5 guys who rotate playing in the outfield are pretty good at tracking a ball, they seem quite inept at providing any kind of offensive juice.
Pitching has been the lone bright spot for this 2025 version of the Royals, and even through this rough patch, it’s held up okay. But when the bats can’t get going, it’s unfair to continuously put the burden on the pitching staff to win games, scoring 2-3 runs per game. I do trust that how the Royals have played for the past month or so is not a complete anomaly, but certainly not what should be projected going forward.
However, it’s not hard for me to see a way that when we look back on this season, we realize that maybe this team was just a little overrated and was more than just a couple of pieces away from true playoff contention.