Maikel Garcia Is Proving His Worth on the Royals
Maikel Garcia has played incredibly well so far in 2025, and he deserves a lot more credit than he's getting.
Infielder Maikel Garcia of the Kansas City Royals has begun the 2025 season like a shot out of a cannon, and is certainly on his way to establishing new career-highs across the board offensively.
In his previous two full seasons at the MLB level, Garcia was known as a versatile defender with good speed and a great glove to support his below-average bat. While those parts of his game have very much remained true and strong parts of Garcia as a player, his offensive ability has been taken to a whole new level this season.
His best offensive season prior to 2025 was his 2023 year in which he slashed .272/.323/.358 with 4 home runs, 50 RBI, and 23 stolen bases. Overall, not an awful offensive season by any means, but one that characterized a prototypical leadoff hitter with speed and a lack of power. To kick off the new year, Garcia has already matched his 2023 home run total in 348 fewer plate appearances.
Through 42 games, he is hitting .295/.361/.456, improving all aspects of his line greatly from his aforementioned career best marks. He ranks in the top-three in virtually all offensive counting stats on the 25-18 Kansas City Royals this season alongside veteran slugger Salvador Pérez and superstar Bobby Witt Jr.
In many ways, Garcia’s game is mimicking that of Witt’s, as his speed and defense combined with a surging bat bears many similarities to the performance of Witt thus far. If Garcia can keep this up over a sizeable amount of games, the Royals will have an abundance of young infield talent on their hands (in fact, they might already).
Power Increase
Garcia has never been known as a powerful hitter, or really one who barrels up the ball with any consistency. His barrel rate, according to Baseball Savant, has sat in the 10th percentile league-wide over the last two seasons and has jumped up to 29th percentile in 2025. Nothing crazy, but a year-to-year jump from 3.7% to 6.2% is definitely an improvement.
His average exit velocity of 91.9 MPH sits in the 84th percentile across all of MLB and his expected slugging percentage sits at a comfortable mark of .472. He’s notched exit velocities of 90 MPH or higher 72 times this season and is hitting .431 with 13 of his 15 extra-base hits falling into this category.
Garcia’s line drive rate has increased by around 3% from last season and is pulling a much higher rate of balls in play to left field. These differences in his hitting tendencies from 2024 to 2025 can be seen in the table below as gathered from his Baseball Savant page.
| pull % | straight % | opposite % | |
| 2024 | 29.7% | 41.2 | 29.1 |
| 2025 | 38.0% | 40.3 | 21.7 |
Combined with a 4.2% decrease in groundball rate and a 2.9% uptick in line drive rate, Garcia’s hitting the ball with much more authority than he ever has before. Whereas he was previously known for his non-offensive attributes, he’s bringing a lot more to the table than even the Royals could have predicted.
Strong Defense and Baserunning
As mentioned earlier, Maikel Garcia’s defensive prowess has always been one of the highlights of his game and has earned him the playing time that he’s capitalizing on now. In 2023, he sported an incredible 15 OAA which ranked him in the 98th percentile in all of MLB. The following season he regressed to the 75th percentile and currently sits in the 77th percentile thus far in 2025.
While it’s clear to see that he’s not reaching the same levels as he did in 2023, he’s still been playing great defense for the Royals, who have always been a strong defensive team in recent memory.
His 3 OAA at third base this season ties him for third place at the position with Ryan McMahon and Josh Jung – all notable third basemen on both sides of the baseball.
Garcia ranks second at the position in what Baseball Savant calls Success Rate Added, a metric that quantifies a player’s defensive ability to prevent baserunners from taking extra bases, landing only slightly behind Ernie Clement of the Toronto Blue Jays for the league lead at third base.
Garcia also ranks fifth in the AL with 10 stolen bases already in 2025, but also leads the league in times caught stealing with 5. His sprint speed currently sits in the 61st percentile but in previous seasons he has consistently shown the ability to perform around the 75th percentile in this area.
He was third-best in all of MLB last season with 8 Baserunning Runs and fifth-best in Basestealing Runs with 26, so it’s easy to see how his ability on the basepaths can be transformational in a game. Although he’s not putting up the same numbers in these metrics so far in 2025, he’ll likely even out and improve in it as the season progresses.
Contact-First Approach
Maikel Garcia has consistently been a contact-first hitter whose primary concern is on not missing the ball. In 2025, he’s only struck out in 14.6% of his at-bats and boasts a whiff percentage in the 91st percentile.
Furthermore, his chase rate remains among the league’s best as he’s almost replicated last year’s 21.2% chase rate to 21.5% in 2025. Good swing decisions and a lack of swing-and-miss in his game combined with his aforementioned increased power this season are combining for very important and impactful at-bats for the Royals out of a previously unrelied-upon bat in the lineup.
For the first time in his career, Garcia also has a bat speed above the MLB average. He’s improved in this metric by about 1 MPH each season, going from 69.8 MPH in 2023 to 70.8 MPH last season and 71.9 MPH in 2025.
There’s a pretty clear correlation between a high bat speed and contact at the plate, so perhaps Garcia’s increased bat speed is the cause of his improved numbers at the plate.
Maikel Garcia has been one of the strongest parts of the Royals’ success this season and without his contributions they may not find themselves 6 games above .500 over a month into the season. When combined with the amazing performances of Pérez and Witt, Kansas City is looking to be a true contender in 2025.
Written by
Ethan has been writing for Jays Journal, a site on the Fansided network, since 2023 and is fascinated by how sabermetric statistics can assist our understanding…