The Royals Have at Least Found Their Core This Season
Alongside established stud Bobby Witt Jr., the emergence of two young stars on the Royals should give fans hope for a brighter future.
On the surface, the 2026 Kansas City Royals‘ season has been a huge disappointment. That’s in sharp contrast to how things were feeling just two years ago.
After an eight-year playoff drought, the Royals finally found their way back to the postseason in 2024. With stud, third-year shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. leading the way on offense and defense and a top ten pitching staff by ERA, Kansas City fans had hope for the first time in a long time.
The Royals would start off by sweeping the Orioles in the Wild Card round before falling to the Yankees in the Division Series. It was a disappointing end to the season, but one the team could hope to build off of moving forward.
Kansas City would take a bit of a step back in 2025, dropping from 86 wins to 82 on the season. They’d be in the hunt for a second straight playoff appearance up until the end before being officially eliminated on September 23.
Though the offense would take a step back, finishing bottom five in MLB in runs per game, another future contributor in Maikel Garcia would reveal himself. Perhaps 2025 could be just a minor setback en route to a bounce back 2026.
If only that were the case. The Royals have regressed even further this season, and with a week remaining on the schedule, they have just a 68-90 record while being long eliminated from playoff contention. Their current -104 run differential is second to last (A’s are at -217) in a weak American League.
Yet despite the misery fans have had to experience with all the piled up losses, there should be hope for the future. A new wave of young Royals stars has shown that the team has the building blocks to turn things around.
A Sizzling Royals Sophomore Is Leading the Way on Offense
While the overall record has taken a step back in 2026, the offense took a small step forward, jumping from 4.02 runs per game to 4.25 as of September 24. A young slugger with big pop played a large part in that improvement.
In his second MLB season, Jac Caglianone appears to have made the adjustments necessary to be a threat at the plate for Kansas City. That wasn’t as obvious an assessment following his rookie season last year.
Drafted sixth overall in a 2024 draft with a lot of advanced hitters, expectations were high for Caglianone, who entertained fans at the University of Florida with 68 towering homers in his final two years on campus. 79 games were enough for the Royals to call then 23-year-old up to the majors for good.
Caglianone’s rookie season came with plenty of bumps and bruises. In 62 games he’d slash a miniscule .157/.237/.295 with six doubles, seven homers, and just a 47 wRC+. However, an abnormally low .172 batting average on balls in play combined with a solid 22.4% strikeout rate left hope for a turnaround in year two.
A turnaround is exactly what happened. Caglianone has been significantly improved across the board, slashing .283/.335/.485 with 28 doubles, 23 homers, 71 RBIs, and a 126 wRC+. That wRC+ is tops on the team for any player with over 50 plate appearances.
Much of his success could be related to swinging more confidently and aggressively at the plate. Caglianone has swung at 73.2% of pitches in the zone this season, up quite a bit from 67.5% last year. And on first pitches specifically, he’s swung at 48.1%, which is majorly up from 39.7% last year.
As a result, Caglianone is hitting the ball with more force than his rookie year. His hard hit rate has rocketed up from 42.4% to 54.3% (which lands in the 98th percentile in MLB) and his average exit velocity has gone from 89.4 mph to 93.1 mph.
While his BABIP was overly low last season, it’s worth pointing out that it’s quite high in 2026 at .351, so some regression may come. Still, with how much better he’s seeing the ball and putting up more confident at bats, it feels like this is closer to the version of Caglianone that the Royals will get moving forward.
An Impressive Royals Rookie Solidifies Status as Catcher of the Future
When the Royals selected Carter Jensen in the third round of the 2021 draft, there was no doubt what they were hoping he would become. That was even though it meant facing a sad reality regarding a franchise favorite.
Salvador Perez, a nine-time All-Star and former World Series MVP, was in the middle of his age-31 season and the 10th season of his career back in 2021. It would be one of his best seasons ever as he finished with a 2.7 fWAR that he only topped two other times.
But like with all players, age started to catch up to the legendary Royals backstop. So in the final month of the season last year, the team brought Jensen up for his MLB debut to get ready for a changing of the guard.
Jensen had progressed right on schedule through the minors, starting off at the Complex League in 2021 and reaching a new level in each of the following years. After showing out well in his 20-game cup of coffee last year, it was time for a much heavier workload in 2026.
And Jensen has proven up to the task. The 23-year-old has slashed .237/.323/.454 in 146 games this season with a 114 wRC+ that is tied for third on the team behind Caglianone and Witt.
Jensen compares quite favorably with his fellow rookies this year. While his 33 doubles lead all qualified MLB rookies, his 25 homers rank fourth behind sluggers Kazuma Okamoto and Munetaka Murakami (33), as well as Sal Stewart (32). Jensen’s 76 RBI place third behind only Stewart (110) and Okamoto (89).
The rookie has already proven plenty competent behind the plate as well. Per FanGraphs, Jensen has caught 19 runners stealing on the season, which ties for 10th-most among MLB catchers and is good for a very solid 34.5% caught stealing rate.
Like Caglianone, Jensen has already proven that he has what it takes to succeed at the Major League level. And this is all great news for the future of Royals baseball.
The Royals Have At Least Found Their Core This Season
For small market teams like the Kansas City Royals, having a strong, young core of players to build around is so important to long-term success. Luckily, it’s starting to appear that the franchise has just that.
Of course, everything starts and ends with Witt. The Royals’ shortstop has established himself as one of the league’s top superstars and the 11-year megadeal he signed back in 2024 squarely makes him the cornerstone of the organization.
The team locked up another member of the roster when the signed Garcia to a five-year extension this last offseason. The Venezuelan was off to a slow start at the plate beforehand and hamstring injuries negated much of his season. He and the team will look forward to a healthy follow up season.
Kansas City also has at least two more years of team control for Vinnie Pasquantino. The first baseman has a wRC+ over 100 in all five seasons to start his MLB career.
It can be hard, as a fan, to see your team ranked toward the bottom of the league and still have hope for a winning future. The emergence of a strong, young core, however, is exactly the silver lining many teams with a record like the Royals don’t always get to find.
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Written by
Matt Carroll is a writer for Just Baseball and former site expert at Reviewing the Brew. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently…