The offense might never improve, but that doesn’t have to mean trouble.
Much ink, digital and otherwise, has been spilled on the topic of the Royals… shall we say inconsistent offense. Methods of improvement that have been suggested include, but are not limited to, lineup changes, promotions, demotions, firings, hirings, and more. These cries reached an apex as the Royals went on an early 10-game road trip and immediately dropped eight of them, including six in a row at one point.
The offense isn’t good
Since then, the Royals have basically made one move. They demoted MJ Melendez and recalled Drew Waters. That move has paid huge dividends, at least to start as Waters has been a roughly league-average hitter since returning to KC, a drastic improvement over Melendez, who sports the fourth-worst wRC+ in all of MLB for players with 50 or more plate appearances this season.
You could perhaps argue that the Royals made at least half a change in regards to Melendez’s opening day counterpart, Hunter Renfroe. Renfroe has seen his playing time diminish drastically since Melendez was demoted. India has gotten most of the starts in left with Waters often starting in right. When one of them doesn’t start in a corner outfield spot, it’s as often left up to Mark Canha and Cavan Biggio to start rather than Renfroe. Maikel Garcia even got a single start in right field at one point.
Salvador Perez has started hitting much better, Vinnie Pasquantino has raised his batting average 40 points since the beginning of May. Kyle Isbel and Freddy Fermin have embraced their ability to bunt for hits. But the Royals are still struggling to score runs consistently. Since May began, they have three blowout wins, but are still averaging a touch over four runs per game, even so, because they’ve struggled so hard to score in the other games. They scored four runs total in the Boston series, so any hope that they were completely fixed after the recent winning stretch has been dashed.
To reiterate, the hitting is bad, but it’s hard to see how they can continue to be this bad all year. And if they are, well…
The pitching is elite
The Royals have won 16 of their last 20 (17 of 21, if you count the last game in the awful 10-game stretch) and have two separate winning streaks of six or more. Almost two weeks into May, they’ve only lost three games this month. Here’s another important number from this stretch:
The Royals have prevented any earned runs from scoring in seven of their last sixteen games, including four times in May alone. Six of those were shutouts, one was an unearned run when the Red Sox scored their Manfred man in the eleventh inning of Friday night’s contest. The Royals have the second-best ERA in baseball at 2.99, even after the Saturday shellacking. I think we all know how good the starters have been, but humor me:
- Kris Bubic – 1.69 ERA
- Seth Lugo – 3.02 ERA
- Cole Ragans – 4.20 ERA
- Michael Wacha – 2.98 ERA
- Michael Lorenzen – 3.57 ERA
I mean, sure, maybe you’re not fully bought into Bubic, and even I wouldn’t predict he’ll finish the season with a sub-2.00 ERA. But having watched him pitch, ignoring everything that came before last season, a sub-3.00 ERA seems extremely doable. And a sub-2.50 ERA does not seem entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Also, Cole Ragans, the staff ace, has the worst ERA out of that bunch. Even if some of the other regress a little, they should make it up with Ragans’ ERA eventually coming down. Not only does the eye test tell us he’s better than this, but FIP, xFIP, and SIERA all say he’s about two runs better than he’s pitched so far.
The thing that differentiates this team from last year’s team, besides Bubic over Marsh, is the bullpen, so let’s take a look there, too.
- Steven Cruz – 0.00 ERA
- Lucas Erceg – 0.54 ERA
- Daniel Lynch IV – 0.93 ERA
- John Schreiber – 1.65 ERA
- Carlos Estévez – 2.50 ERA
- Angel Zerpa – 7.20 ERA
- Chris Stratton – 7.20 ERA
- Taylor Clarke/Jonathan Bowlan/Evan Sisk – 0.00 ERA
Obviously, the trio of Clarke, Bowlan, and Sisk will give up runs eventually, given enough innings. Similarly, Steven Cruz will, too. But John Schreiber was good last year and is throwing nastier pitches this season. Lucas Erceg and Daniel Lynch IV have picked up right where they left off, even if it is reasonable to expect them to give up some more runs at some point, too.
Chris Stratton and Angel Zerpa have been problems, but if you’ve got five or six good relievers in your bullpen, at least a couple of them should be available on any given night. Even when the Royals’ bullpen improved late last year, it was almost entirely on Erceg and Bubic, with Zerpa and Schreiber being a bit hit-or-miss. If the first two were unavailable and the latter two had an off-night, it was going to be a bad time. And, of course, the Royals have options to replace Zerpa and Stratton if the bullpen starts getting more strained that it has been to this point.
There has been a lot of angst about Carlos Estévez being the closer’s role, but he is tied for fourth among closers with 11 saves, and he ranks in the top third of qualified relievers in ERA. We’ve all been a bit spoiled by HDH and Lucas Erceg – who may not be getting the saves, but often faces the much tougher part of the lineup – but Estévez is a plenty good closer. Don’t forget that the White Sox have blown every save opportunity except for one – in a game that ended early due to rain. If you wanted to look at a better team, have you seen what Devin Williams has been doing in New York?
Estévez is fine!
No matter how many times I call him “Heart Attackévez”.
They never give up
One of the most underrated aspects of a winning club, I think, is the fact that they will never give up. This was true for the 2014 Royals by the time they got to the playoffs, it was true for the 2015 Royals all season, and it was true for last year’s team. The 2025 Royals have that attribute as well. Look no further than Estévez’s blown save against the Rockies, the comeback win over the White Sox last Tuesday, or even the comeback win against the Red Sox on Friday. It would have been easy to roll over and accept that they can’t win every game in any of those matches, but the Royals fought tooth and nail and came back. Sure, it doesn’t work every time, but never giving up means stealing games like those. That’s the sort of thing that adds up over the course of a year and can mean the difference between advancing in the playoffs and going home.
A team that never gives up is a team that can win close games. Like the ones they’ll play with an elite pitching staff and a mediocre-at-best offense.
What if the worst case happens?
“OK,” you might be asking, “what if the Royals’ pitching regresses negatively more than you think and the hitting doesn’t regress positively at all?” Well, friend, then we have an entirely different kind of excitement to look forward to this summer.
Royals fans are all old hands at looking forward to the trade deadline, but this season, the Royals should enter July with some extremely coveted pieces. Seth Lugo, assuming he pitches at least 80% as well as he has to this point in the season, will be the most valuable trade piece on the market. Michael Lorenzen, assuming he pitches 90% as well as he has so far, won’t be far behind. Hunter Harvey should also be an exceptionally valuable trade chip. The Royals don’t really have any hitters they could trade, unless Salvy is finally ready to get out of KC. But those three alone should bring back quite a prospect haul for the Royals. Add in the fact that the 2026 Royals should almost certainly start the season with Noah Cameron, Jac Caglianone, and Carter Jensen, among others, on their Opening Day roster, and the Royals could reload very quickly. If they can’t turn those three guys into at least one and probably a couple of top-flight, nearly-MLB-ready prospects in a scenario where the team has otherwise fallen apart, then JJ Picollo should be immediately fired for gross incompetence.
But, honestly, that doesn’t seem like the most likely scenario. The Royals have played a lot more good baseball than they have bad so far this year, and there’s no real reason to think they can’t battle for a playoff spot well enough to be buying at the deadline. If they keep playing exactly as they have, call up Jac, and add another team’s bat, they should be set to really destroy some non-Royal hopes come October.