The Royals need power, and Jac has that, but what else can he offer?
Jac Caglianone has officially been added to the Royals’ MLB roster, and there is every reason to expect he will start, perhaps in right field, in Tuesday’s series opener in St. Louis. Reactions to this news have ranged from pure joy that the savior has arrived to sheer terror that the Royals are promoting their best prospect in an act of desperation, and will permanently damage his ability to ever be a quality major league batter.
So let’s lean into the hyperbole a bit. When Caglianone was first drafted, Royals fans were treated to the announcement that Caglianone’s ceiling was Aaron Judge or Bryce Harper. Very few players ever reach their ceiling – ask Adley Rutschman about that, right now – but that was a good start. His floor was compared to Joey Gallo and, at least in my mind, Oneil Cruz, if he couldn’t avoid the strikeouts
The first thing we have to acknowledge is that, even as impressive as his minor league stint has been, the floors are still a possibility. But Joey Gallo had several years of success in Texas from 2017-2021 before he was traded to the Yankees, and everything fell apart. Oneil Cruz finally got his strikeout rate down to 30% last season and had a terrific year, he’s having an even better season this year. If those are the floors, then Jac is going to be a joy to watch in Kansas City.
But those floors might actually be too low for Jac.
As I noted, Oneil Cruz finally got his strikeout rate down to 30% last season. Before that it was always 35% or higher. Joey Gallo has a career strikeout rate of 38%. Jac has some chase in his game, but remarkably, he doesn’t have much swing and miss. That differentiates him from those two players. Both of them struck out significantly more in their minor league careers than the roughly 20% Caglianone has been at. And, for what it’s worth, projection systems have him between 20-25% at the big league level, still well below even the best Cruz and Gallo seasons.
Speaking of preseason projections, Jac Caglianone would have already been one of the best hitters in the current lineup with a roughly league-average bat, according to most of them. You can still see many of those projections on his FanGraphs page. Of course, Michael Massey was predicted to be much better than he has been, too, so those aren’t perfect. And it was reasonable for the Royals, who were already paying MJ Melendez and Hunter Renfroe, to give those guys a chance to turn things around while letting Jac prove in the minors that his Spring Training wasn’t a fluke. Still, things have only gone up for him since then.
From a projection standpoint, Caglianone was the biggest mover of the spring, going from a projected wRC+ of 72 to 96, in large part because he had so little professional experience to draw from before. As one can expect, his 14 homers and .593 slugging percentage have only excited ZiPS even more. We now have significant professional play, and in the high minors, so not only has the projection continued to improve, but the error bars have also tightened.
ZiPS now projects Caglianone, if promoted to the majors, to hit .263/.335/.459, good enough for a 120 OPS+ and a wRC+ of 118.
That’s a quote from an article by Dan Szymborski, creator of ZiPS, one of the best forecast tools in the sport. We have to remember that when we get a ZiPS projection, it’s a 50th percentile projection. Which means that in roughly half of the simulations, he was worse than that. But also, in half the simulations, he was better.
A .263/.335/.459 slash line and 120 OPS+ projection is good, but not world-altering. I managed to reach out to Dan on social media and conned him into giving me the projected home run total to go with those numbers: 12 for the rest of the season. That may not be as flashy as many of us would perhaps like, but the Royals have a -3.1 bWAR in the outfield and a -1.1 bWAR at designated hitter. If they could replace that with something at league average, it would be a HUGE swing for them. Replacing it with someone 20% above league average? That could be season-altering. If the rest of the hitters can’t find any power, 12 may very well lead the team over that span.
This is no desperation move by the Royals; the numbers say that Jac is ready to contribute at the big league level. As Dan notes in the above article, and as you could tell from my daily #JacWagon updates I was providing for the past week, there’s little else for him to prove at the AAA level.
Here’s your Sunday #JacWagon update!
Jac went 0-for-2 with a walk last night. He also had a sacrifice fly. His final AB resulted in a line out to second base at 109.8 MPH off the bat.
He had no homers but also no chases or whiffs and plate discipline is the more important metric right now.
— Hokius (Trails Into Daybreak 1) (@hokius.fromthehawkseye.com) 2025-06-01T15:26:42.753Z
Jac almost certainly won’t bat cleanup in his first game. I’d bet he starts in the six spot because he probably isn’t a savior, he might struggle, and the Royals aren’t stupid. Still, he should be good enough to give the Royals a couple more chances per game to start, continue, or finish a rally in a lineup that desperately needs those attributes.
This isn’t to say Jac won’t struggle when he first arrives. Almost every player struggles when they first get to the big leagues. For every Bryce Harper and Juan Soto, there is a Mike Trout or Aaron Judge who didn’t immediately get it.
Even if Jac struggles for a bit, there’s every reason to think he’ll figure it out. He has figured out and improved at every level of competition he’s ever played at until now. But he can’t start that process until he’s facing those big league pitchers and making those adjustments. In that way, calling up Jac makes sense, both for a team trying to score runs in the present and for a team that could use a confident, high-quality power bat come playoff time.
Go call your dad, Jac!