The Kansas City Royals offense has been historically bad because they can’t hit home runs.
Watching a Royals game has become less fun for me over time this year. Every deficit is nearly insurmountable, and the leads tend to be small enough to be uncomfortable. It makes a team that is in contention, which should be fun, mostly a source of stress. We, as Royals fans, have struggled through some bad offenses in the past, but this one feels like the worst one. I assumed that was more a feeling than a fact because this is a winning team with something to play for, but this offense is actually the worst we have ever seen.
Since the Royals entered the league in 1969, there have been 1,588 team seasons (including 2025, which is not yet complete). If you rank all of those teams by how many runs they score per game, then the Royals are currently ranked 1,567th. Only 21 teams have ever, or are on pace to, score less than the 3.3 runs per game that this team has managed. This is a bit unfair since it is early in the year and scoring increases in the summer, so they are likely to climb the list a bit. Still, this team has been incredibly, historically bad at scoring runs. That is a Dead Ball Era-looking total. Spring scoring last season for all of MLB was 4.38 per game in April and 4.24 in May. That only increased to a peak of 4.57 in July, It is unlikely to get more than a .2 bump in runs per game for June through September based on last year’s data and that runs scored so far this year are similar to last April and May. A 3.5 runs per game rate is still atrociously bad.
Unsurprisingly, the worst Royals team at scoring runs for a full season is the 1969 Royals, their inaugural season. That was an expansion team coming off of 1968’s “The Year of the Pitcher.” It was a very low-scoring environment for regular teams, let alone a team that had not yet had a chance to set itself up for success. That team still scored 3.6 runs per game. For this team to not take that last place Royals slot from the ‘69 squad, they will need to average 3.75 runs the rest of the season. It is a manageable feat, especially if trading for bats and bringing up Caglianone happen, but right now that sounds far-fetched.
The big difference between 2024 and 2025 is not the frequency of getting hits but the type. In 2024, they hit .248 compared to .246 this season. The problem power and timing. Of the Royals’ hits in 2025, 69.8% are singles versus 65.1% in 2024. Extra base hits make scoring runs so much easier. Couple that with the RISP struggles, and it is a recipe for disaster. I think hitting with runners in scoring position will level out some because it normally does, though this not guaranteed. BaseRuns standings have an expected runs per game of 3.65 for this team thus far, better but still quite bad. I think the lack of power is a larger, and harder to fix, problem.
The Royals are on pace for 12 more doubles than last year and 4 fewer triples, neither of which a huge factor. The big problem is no home runs. This team is on pace for 94 homers in 2025. The 2024 Royals hit 170 home runs. That is a 44.7% drop in home run production! In 2024, Bobby Witt Jr. hit 32 home runs – this year he is on pace for 14. Salvador Perez hit 27 last year and has just 4 this year. Only Vinnie Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia are on pace to eclipse last year’s total. This team has to start hitting the ball over the wall, or they will continue to limp along, hoping the pitching can save them.
Unfortunately, I have no answers for this, only the observation that hitting singles instead of home runs is a problem, which I think we all knew already. Asking Jac Caglianone to be the savior is really unfair, but he has prodigious power and will hopefully bolster the lineup at some point. I do think that identifying the problem is the first step, and this is it.
It also gives some direction in what types of players to target in a trade if they can stay in the race that long with this run-scoring issue. As fans you should not be looking for a 6, 7, or 8 run output which does feel good when it happens. What you need to be watching for is the team to start hitting 1 or 2 home runs a game. That would be a sign that things are turning in the right direction.