The Royals entered Thursday’s scheduled off day with a 2-4 record after losing their series matchups against the Cleveland Guardians (at home) and the Milwaukee Brewers (on the road). Kansas City returns home this weekend for an AL Wild Card matchup against the Baltimore Orioles, whom the Royals beat in two games last October to advance to the ALDS (where they eventually lost to the Yankees in four games).
The Orioles have also gotten off to a rocky start, as their record is 3-4 as of Thursday afternoon. They split a four-game series on the road against Toronto, but lost two of three to the Red Sox in their home-opener series. However, Baltimore will get a considerable boost this weekend, as All-Star Gunnar Henderson will likely return to the Orioles’ lineup after starting the season on the IL.
The season is far too early to say any particular series is a “must-win.” However, the Royals came into 2025 with high hopes after an 86-76 season and an appearance in the ALDS in 2024. At the very least, the club and fanbase expect to compete for an AL Central Division title this season. Winning a home series against the Orioles, another team with high expectations, will help Royals fans feel that they are working positively toward their expected goals this season.
That said, for the Royals to get back on track and take this series against Baltimore, they must turn things around on the hitting end.
Kansas City hasn’t bottomed out by any means on the offensive side. Conversely, they haven’t been consistently performing in many key batting categories. According to Fangraphs, they rank 17th in runs scored, 20th in batting average, 21st in slugging, and 22nd in wOBA.
Surprisingly, their run differential is -2, the second-best mark in the AL Central (behind the Chicago White Sox, which is even more surprising). However, no team in the division has gotten off to a good start this year (all have a 2-4 record), so a series win against the Orioles could help the Royals build momentum toward the top of the AL Central by next week.
So, what has contributed to the Royals’ offensive mediocrity through six games? And how salvageable is this offense and certain hitters in the lineup?
In this post, I will examine five Statcast hitting metrics highlighting the Royals’ slow offensive start. I will also share whether those metrics will improve or if they could be long-term issues for the Royals’ lineup this season.
5.0% Team Barrel Rate
The Royals are tied for 23rd in the league in home runs with four so far this year and rank 20th in ISO with a .126 mark. A significant contributor to their struggles in the power department could be their inability to barrel the ball in their first six games of the season.
According to Savant, Kansas City’s 5.0% barrel rate is the second-worst mark in the league. The only team they are ahead of is the Houston Astros, who sport a 4.7% barrel rate. The Royals trail the Guardians (5.3%) and the Pirates (5.9%), the only other teams below the six percent barrel threshold.
The Royals have made it a priority to try to launch the ball early on this season. Their average launch angle on batted balls as a team is 22.5 degrees, the highest launch angle in baseball. The next closest mark is the New York Yankees, with a 21.1-degree average launch angle on batted balls this year. However, the Yankees have a league-high 19 home runs, 15 more than the Royals.
What is the main difference (beyond Yankee Stadium’s short porch)?
The Yankees’ barrel rate is 19%, which leads the league. Thus, the Yankees lift the ball more when they make contact and reach the sweet spot (a batted-ball event with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees) more frequently.
For context, look at the LA Sweet Spot percentages of both Royals and Yankees qualified hitters this season (Yankees on left; Royals on right).
The Yankees have five hitters with LA Sweet Spot rates of 50 percent or higher. The Royals? They have zero and only three with LA Sweet Spot percentages over 40 percent (Michael Massey, Salvador Perez, and Bobby Witt Jr.).
That demonstrates that while the Royals are lifting the ball more than a year ago (their average launch angle was 13.8 degrees), they are also hitting more pop-ups, which is inflating their average launch angle as a team. If the Royals’ hitters can focus on getting to the sweet spot in terms of launch angle more, their barrel rates will increase, leading to more run production.
33.1% Team Hard-Hit Rate
That said, launch angle is only part of the solution regarding barrel rate. Hitters need to hit the ball hard as well. Unfortunately, the Royals haven’t done that in their first six games.
Hitting the ball hard has been the modus operandi for the Royals under hitting coach Alec Zumwalt over the past two seasons.
In 2024, they ranked 8th in hard-hit rate as a team with a 40.5% mark. In 2023, their 41.1% hard-hit rate ranked as the 7th-best mark in baseball. Under Matt Quatraro and Zumwalt, the Royals have at least shown an ability to hit the ball hard consistently.
This year, however, the Royals have the second-worst hard-hit rate in baseball, at 33.1%. Their hard-hit rate is only 0.4 percent higher than that of the Detroit Tigers, who have the worst hard-hit rate in Major League Baseball.
Here’s how the Royals’ hitters have fared in hard-hit rate (via Savant) this year.
The league average hard-hit rate is 39.7%. Only two Royals hitters have marks above the MLB average: Witt (57.9%) and Maikel Garcia (42.9%). Some concerningly low hard-hit rates belong to Perez, who has a 31.6% hard-hit rate, and Vinnie Pasquantino, who has a 28.6% hard-hit rate.
It will be hard for the Royals’ offense to turn things around when their third and fourth hitters are sporting hard-hit rates well below the league average. The sooner that Salvy and Vinnie can start to see an increase in hard-hit rate, the sooner the Royals will turn around their offensive woes.
Salvy can’t be sub-35% and Vinnie can’t be sub-30% hard-hit rate hitters if this Royals lineup overall wants to see success in 2025.
Renfroe’s .183 xSLG
With the Royals unable to acquire a middle-of-the-order bat this offseason, they needed someone like Hunter Renfroe to step up in 2025 after a disappointing 2024 campaign. Unfortunately for the Royals, it’s been more of the same from Renfroe through six games this year.
In 21 plate appearances this year, Renfroe has a slash of .111/.238/.167 with a .405 OPS. After posting a sub-20% K rate last season for the first time since his 2016 rookie campaign, his strikeout rate is back up to 28.6%, an 8.8% increase from his 2024 mark. An increase in whiff rate (23.4% to 26.7%) and decrease in zone contact rate (84.7% to 80%) have contributed to this sharp inflation in strikeouts for Renfroe this season.
That said, it’s not the strikeouts that concern Royals fans with Renfroe. After all, he has a career strikeout rate of 24.8%, so swings-and-misses will always be part of his game. Instead, his lack of power has been a huge red flag about his outlook for 2025.
Renfroe’s .167 slugging is terrible enough, but his .183 xSLG (expected slugging) is a more discouraging sign regarding the 33-year-old’s power potential this year.
Renfroe has a career xSLG of .435 and a .362 xSLG a season ago. That latter mark was a 30-point negative difference from his actual slugging (.392) last year, so there was some concern that his power was starting to wane at this point in his career.
Granted, his xSLG is 16 points higher than his slugging percentage this year. That said, it’s still a paltry mark, ranking as the third-worst mark of any Royals hitter with more than one plate appearance this season. Only MJ Melendez (.126) and Kyle Isbel (.153) have been worse in this category.
Furthermore, the batted-ball spray chart doesn’t precisely give Royals fans a sign of hope, for even the batted balls don’t have much distance on them.
Renfroe is pulling the ball a bit more, but he’s pulling it in the left-center gap, which isn’t ideal at Kauffman Stadium, especially if the batted balls don’t have a ton of exit velocity. With an 86.7 MPH average exit velocity on batted balls this year, it isn’t surprising that Renfroe has only collected two hits on his spray chart this season.
I projected that Renfroe would hit 20 or more home runs this season in a bounce-back campaign. Right now, that bold prediction is looking like a foolish bet.
Vinnie’s 36.8% Chase Rate
Pasquantino’s strength as a prospect in the Royals system was his plate discipline, and he’s transitioned that skill to the big leagues.
According to Fangraphs, his career strikeout rate is 12.4%, and his career BB/K ratio is 0.73. Those are encouraging metrics, especially since other Royals-developed hitters (like Melendez, for example) haven’t fared so well in those categories at the big-league level.
However, Vinnie’s slow start could be due to his swing-happy approach to begin the 2025 season.
His 36.8% chase rate is a 6.1% increase from a season ago. The more free-swinging approach has led to a higher barrel rate (14.3%), but he’s made less consistent contact, as evidenced by his low hard-hit rate and .294 xwOBA CON, a 55-point regression from 2024.
An interesting early trend for Vinnie through six games is that he’s swinging at more balls down and inside than he did a season ago.
In 2024, most of Vinnie’s swings came inside the zone, with only a 32% swing rate on pitches down and away and a 24% swing rate on pitches down and inside. He’s still disciplined on pitches down and away, as evidenced by his 33% swing rate. However, he’s sporting a 67% swing rate on pitches down and inside.
It seems like Vinnie is getting beat early on by hard breaking curve balls that dive toward him, like this one from Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta.
It’s still early, so perhaps Vinnie is still getting his pitch recognition down at the plate. Nonetheless, he must ease up on his overeager approach, especially with two strikes. Pitchers have been taking advantage of him with breaking balls down and inside, resulting in him not producing like he did a season ago.
Bobby’s .440 xwOBA CON
It’s been pretty doom and gloom with these metrics, but I’m ending this post with a positive Statcast metric from Witt, the Royals’ most crucial hitter.
Witt’s surface-level metrics haven’t been great through six games. In 28 plate appearances, he has a slash of .240/.321/.320, a .640 OPS, and a .277 wOBA. That’s not precisely what Royals fans were expecting out of the gate from Witt, especially after finishing as a runner-up in the AL MVP race in 2024 to Aaron Judge.
However, when looking at his hard-hit metrics, Witt fares much better.
Witt’s xBA is .318, and his xSLG is .436, significantly better than his actual batting average and slugging marks. His xwOBA is .356, a 79-point difference from his actual wOBA. He also has a hard-hit rate of 57.9%, which is not just the best mark on the Royals team, but 9.6% higher than his 2024 rate.
Thus, his .440 xwOBA Con demonstrates that Bobby is hitting the ball hard. However, he must adjust to increase the “productive” hard-hit contact. His barrel rate is only 5.3% as of Thursday. It won’t stay that low for long as he continues to hit the ball hard, which he has been doing through the Royals’ first six games of 2025.
When looking at his spray chart, he’s hitting the ball hard and deep, but up the middle. That has allowed opposing fielders to make plays on his line drives in the air.
Good fielding defenses have also hurt him. The Guardians and Brewers kept Witt’s hard-hit balls from falling for hits in the past two series, with this example from Jackson Chourio being one of them.
Pulling the ball more would help Witt find more hits and production. He has the potential to do that, as his average bat speed this year is 73.8 MPH and his fast-swing rate is 42.9%. While those are slightly down from a year ago, they are still impressive compared to the rest of the league. His fast-swing rate is 20.1% higher than the MLB average hitter.
Thus, decision-making at the plate will be the key for Witt going forward. The hard hits are there. The bat speed is there. There’s no one with better tools and talent than Bobby, and he’s come so close to genuinely breaking out in his first six games.
The decision-making will improve once he relaxes (I think the hype of all the “awards” has made him press a little). And once that decision-making changes positively (and Witt sees weaker outfield defenses), he will likely return to where he was in 2024.
I hope change can come as soon as this weekend at Kauffman Stadium against the Orioles.
Photo Credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
If it were me, I would bail on Renfroe. He is obviously past his prime. You could plug Waters out there and get better numbers for a lot less money. Same with Weimer. I would BOLO for a team with an injured outfielder and trade for a prospect.
A lot of what you are seeing is the stress of expectations. Coach needs to figure a way to make it fun. Victories matter, but when you are playing well, you are loose and easy. If you drop a game because you got beat, as opposed to beat up, you come in tomorrow to win and get even. Right now, it seems they are a bit wary of success.
If I were the manager, I would establish achievable goals. Pitching is our best area. We can try to keep games low scoring in hopes that we pick a couple of wins and the team gets back its swagger.
I think it may be coming if things don’t turn around soon. His situation reminds me very much of Hunter Dozier’s in 2023. If I recall, Dozier didn’t do much in April and was gone by May. Dozier’s contract was tougher as they had to eat his 2024 amount too. Right now, if Renfroe’s isn’t providing power, he doesn’t provide much else in the lineup (though MJ struggling doesn’t help things either).
I get the feeling that they are pressing, especially Bobby and Vinnie. Part of that is on the manager and keeping the clubhouse loose. I also have been concerned with what the hitting coaches are saying. It seems like this group has struggled when there are high expectations, especially the ones developed in the system. I wonder if there could be some changes mid-season if the hitting inconsistencies continue, especially since so much is invested in their young group of hitters (Bobby, Vinnie, and MJ).
At this Stage, eating Renfroe’s Salary is Petty much a given. I would trade him to any taker for a prospect. Even a rehab project with upside. Opens a slot and gets us minor league depth. Didier just pressed himself out of the game. He should have been happy as a .260 hitter with extrabase power and decent OBP and k/BB numbers. Those borderline stars, if consistent are valuable. But, he tried to be the franchise player he was not. If I were to bring up Waters, Weiner or any other bat to plug Renfroe’s hole, I would have them concentrate on getting on base. Eventually, as muscle memory becomes established, the power will come. We have Bobby, Salvy and Pasquatch as power bats. Massey, and apparently Maikel, as a lesser power bat. Everybody else’s job is to be anything but an out.
Hitters are streaky and eventually the law of greater numbers will assert itself. MJ may catch fire soon. With will for certain. They should get two hacks and then work for a BB… We can be very troublesome if we play to beat the other team.
Its simple really, The Royals are thinking to much. George Brett in the Digging Deep pod cast said it best, player think to much, see the ball hit the ball. Perez swings at to many pitches outside the strike zone, poor plate discipline. Same thing with Bobby
He’s definitely pressing, as is the team. At the same time, this is Major League Baseball and they got to figure that out. You can’t keep pressing for a whole season. Either they have the talent or don’t and unfortunately it seems more like the latter on the offensive end of things.