Vinnie Pasquantino, Bobby Witt Jr, and Michael Massey always seem to start slow. Is this just that again or are the Royals going to have to do something with the two that are really struggling?
April has not been a friendly month for some of the Royals, not only this season but in the last several years. Three of them, Vinnie Pasquantino, Bobby Witt Jr., and Michael Massey, have started to become notoriously slow starters. Does that mean Vinnie and Michael will come around soon and will Bobby jump up another level, or is this time different?
Bobby Witt’s worst months of hitting for his career have been the bookends. His career Mar/Apr wRC+ is 110 and September is 104. He is still above average, because he is a great player, but they are not like the other months for whatever reason. Last year was the first April where he was good, posting a 151 wRC+, which ended up being his third-best month, so it looked like maybe the rough starts to the season would be a thing of the past. So far, Bobby has been good again, but not yet great, sitting at 138 wRC+. Again, that is for most players a fantastic mark, but the power has not shown up yet the way we know it can so he has been merely an MVP candidate level rather than possibly the best player in baseball.
I’m not going to waste a lot of time on Witt. He is a spectacular player that is productive even when not hitting on all cylinders and is on pace for 8ish fWAR, but I have yet to see the red hot July and August version of last year, so I know more could be coming.
The first big concern is Vinnie Pasquantino. When he came up the first time, Vinnie struggled mightily for a few weeks. Then, after a little over a month and just over 100 PAs, he posted huge numbers in August and September with a wRC+ of 176 and 167, respectively. Last season, his first month was again a struggle, but his 2023 opening month was solidly above average. Does this just mean that he is going to start slow with some regularity and is about to turn it around this season?
Through 120 plate appearances, Vinnie is hitting .174/.242.303 with a 20% strikeout rate. Striking out has never been a big part of his game. Last year’s 12.8% rate is his highest on record, so 20% is pretty concerning. There are a couple of data points that stand out in the early going for Pasquantino. One is that he is swinging a bit more at pitches out of the zone and a little less at pitches in the zone, while his contact rates have fallen. That is not great, but there is something else that stood out and I had not heard anyone talk about yet.
Last season, Vinnie did a lot of damage against sliders, curveballs, and changes. Those were the three statcast pitch types he had significantly better than average production on. He has always hit sliders especially well. Teams have just stopped throwing them as much to account for this. He had seen sliders at rates in the middle to upper teens throughout his career, but so far this season only 9.2% of pitches thrown to him have been sliders. Curves are down a bit too, though not enough to say anything definitive at this point. So, his struggles might be less about pitch recognition and more about the pitch mix he is seeing. Hopefully, he can adjust to the approach teams are taking against him quickly and get his contact rates back up to their customary elite levels.
Finally, we turn to Michael Massey, who is the slowest of slow starters every season. In 2023 he posted a -16 wRC+ in April, which is even worse than his performance in 2025. That season he went 13 of 81 with 12 singles and 1 double. He struck out 30 times and walked only once. That is a rough month. Last season he was slightly better, though a 44 wRC+ is still ugly. 2025 is really looking like more of the same from Massey. In May of both of the previous seasons, Massey turned it around in a big way, posting a 156 wRC+ in May of 2023 and 158 last year. I don’t see anything all that different from the first month this year as compared to the previous two, so hopefully he is rounding into form as we speak and about to put up another monster May.
The bats are maybe starting to improve as a unit, or maybe winning some low-scoring games has just made the futility at the plate less palpable. Based on history, the best is yet to come for these three players, as early season has not been their forte. I think that assessment is fair for Witt and Massey, that Witt will eventually be even better than his very good play to this point and that Massey just needs a month to warm up. Massey makes me a little nervous, but I am hoping he will show his normal self soon. Only Vinnie looks different enough from last year to truly make me nervous. Whether he is pressing and struggling with pitch selection or pitchers have figured him out or both I cannot say. Something just feels off with him and it is not in a way we have seen previously, and that is enough to be concerning.