No Royals position player is more polarizing now than MJ Melendez, Kansas City’s 26-year-old outfielder. A second-round pick in the 2017 draft and a former Top-5 prospect in the Royals system, it’s been an up-and-down career for Melendez at the Major League level.
In 418 games and 1,606 plate appearances, Melendez has a career slash line of .219/.302/.393 with a career .303 wOBA and 90 wRC+. The lefty has flashed big-time power potential, as evidenced by his 51 career home runs and .175 career ISO.
However, he has struggled with strikeouts since debuting with the Royals in 2022, sporting a career strikeout rate of 26.2%. Of Royals players with 500 or more plate appearances since 2022, only Nick Pratto has a worse strikeout rate (38.7%). Add that with questionable defense, and, unsurprisingly, Melendez has accumulated a -1.0 fWAR since his rookie debut.
There were some questions this offseason regarding Melendez and his role on this Royals roster in 2025 and beyond. The Royals seemed aggressive this offseason in trying to acquire outfield help in Anthony Santander and Jurickson Profar (they dodged a bullet with him being suspended 80 games due to PEDs). However, the only outfield help they received came from Milwaukee in Mark Canha, who was traded to Kansas City at the end of Spring Training.
Therefore, Melendez has seen regular time in the Royals’ outfield through seven games. Unfortunately, the metrics haven’t been stellar.
In six games and 19 plate appearances, he has a slash of .063/.211/.063 with a .159 wOBA and -6 wRC+. His K rate is 31.6%, and his BB/K ratio is 0.17. Furthermore, he has struggled not only in chasing more pitches out of the zone this year (34.7% O-Swing%, 5.8% higher than last year), but also in making contact on pitches in the zone. His zone-contact% is 70.8%, 9.7% lower than his mark last year and 13.2% lower than the MLB average.
The season is still early, but Melendez isn’t doing himself any favors when it comes to proving that he deserves a regular role in this Royals lineup.
Royals fans shouldn’t give up on Melendez just yet, as he is still a 26-year-old and 155 games remain in the 2025 season. That said, while Melendez has been known for making numerous mechanical changes at the plate to solve his struggles, he may be better served reverting to his rookie season approach, even if it may be flawed and limit his ceiling.
Why the Royals Still Believe in Melendez
Some Royals fans may look at Melendez and think their patience with the corner outfielder is fruitless. Conversely, looking at his Statcast metrics and batted-ball profile, it’s easy to see why JJ Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro can’t give up on MJ yet.
Last year, Melendez struggled with whiffs (29.6% whiff rate) and consistently launching the ball (30.2% sweet-spot percentage). That said, his hard-hit metrics were encouraging. He still barreled the ball a decent amount despite his sweet-spot struggles (8.4% barrel rate), and he seemed to succeed on fastballs (0.420 wOBA CON) and breaking pitches (0.413) despite his high whiff rates (28.3% on fastballs; 37.6% on breaking balls).
When Melendez’s swing, timing, and pitch recognition are clicking, he can produce majestic home runs, much like this one against Jose Ruiz of the Phillies last August.
That home run had an exit velocity of 105.5 MPH and would’ve been out of all 30 ballparks. The Royals’ lineup needs that kind of power, especially in the middle of the batting order.
The Changes Melendez Has Made (The Early Results and the Problem)
Thus, it seemed understandable why the Royals and Melendez would push to make some adjustments this offseason with his stance and swing, thinking that a small change could help produce substantial results.
Melendez’s changes were well-documented this offseason and spring. He has moved his hands higher in his stance and eliminated the leg kick, opting for a shorter load to help him get his swing going more quickly.
So far, the change has produced mixed results this year, especially when looking at his bat tracking data via Savant.
Melendez’s average bat speed has increased from 72.8 MPH in 2024 to 73.2 MPH this season. However, his fast-swing rate, which measures swings of 75 MPH or more, has decreased from 32.7% last year to 24.3% this season. Additionally, his squared-up rate on contact has reduced by 9.7%, and his blast rate on contact has decreased by 11.1%.
Thus, the swing change has produced a slightly faster swing, but it’s taking away his greatest strength: power and blasting the ball.
His hard-hit rate on balls in play zone chart from this season illustrates that, especially when compared to what he did in that same chart a year ago.
It’s a small sample, so this data needs to be taken with a grain of salt. However, he has struggled to transition his new swing to Major League pitching, even when watching his plate appearances this year. His strikeout against Milwaukee’s Chad Patrick on a hanging 3-2 cutter illustrates that.
With his power and swing speed, Melendez should be able to crush a pitch like that, even if he’s expecting a harder fastball. At the very least, he should be able to foul it off.
Thus, Melendez shouldn’t necessarily focus on changing his swing mechanics. Instead, it should be on his decision-making and approach to returning to his rookie self, when he hit 18 homers and posted a 97 wRC+ in 534 plate appearances.
Swinging Less; Focusing on the “Big Swing”
Melendez’s rookie season gave fans much hope that he and Bobby Witt Jr. could be a long-term 1-2 combo for the Royals lineup, much like they were in 2021 when they played in Northwest Arkansas and Omaha together. Not only did Melendez show substantial power, but he also displayed sound decision-making at the plate as a rookie via Process+ trends.
That Process+ is incredibly encouraging in so many facets. In 2022, he produced consistent above-average results in both power and decision-making. While his contact started the season as sub-par, he turned things around in August and proved to be an above-average hitter in this area.
Now, let’s look at what his Process+ chart looked like last season.
Interestingly, his contact and power proved to be above-average tools for most of the season (he had slight dips in contact in June and July). However, his decision-making was especially poor, with only above-average stretches in early June (for a few days) and late August/early September.
His Decision Value+ chart also had a season average mark just above the 25th percentile, which can be seen below.
I didn’t share his 2023 Process+ because the graph is acting up right now. However, here’s a look at what his Decision Value and Power charts looked like two seasons ago.
Good stuff, right? In 2023, he produced a 105 Decision Value+ and a 111 Power+ via PLV. However, let’s take a look at the Contact Ability+ chart.
Unfortunately, that Contact Ability+ season average was about 89, just below the 25th percentile. That explains why he only had a 91 wRC+ despite strong power and decision-making trends in 2023.
It seems that Melendez has focused on making more contacts in the past two years (2024 and this year). That contact focus has made him more free-swinging, which hasn’t always produced positive results, as seen in his plate discipline data via Fangraphs.
His O-Swing% has increased by 13.3% since his rookie year, and his overall swing% has risen by 6.6% over that time frame. That hasn’t necessarily resulted in more contact. After posting a 74.5% contact rate and 81.5% Z-Contact% in 2022, he hasn’t touched those marks in 2023, 2024, or so far in 2025 (though he started to show some creeping back toward those rookie marks in 2023 with 73.4% and 80.5% rates, respectively).
His swing aggression trends via PLV also demonstrate that Melendez was a much different hitter, swing-wise, in his rookie season than a year ago.
In 2022, Melendez had a swing aggression season average rate of 1% below the league average. In 2024, his season average rate was nearly 5% higher than the MLB average. Also, notice how Melendez dropped his swing aggression after August. When correlating that chart with his Process+, Royals fans should see that his most PRODUCTIVE stretch via Process+ came when he dramatically stopped swinging so much.
His higher swing rate has also translated into more swings and misses each season, as seen in his whiff breakdown chart via Savant.
This begs the question for Royals fans: Why is Melendez (and/or the Royals’ hitting team) focusing so much on his swing mechanics and not on his approach and pitch recognition?
The reality is that Melendez may always be a high-strikeout hitter. However, in 2022, he showed that he could be the kind of hitter who may have a low average, but can draw walks and hit home runs. There’s a value in that kind of profile, even if it’s not one of a franchise star.
Instead, Melendez sacrifices power for contact, but the contact doesn’t translate into results in the batting average or power departments. The strikeouts are still there, but the walks and home runs aren’t. That makes him nearly unplayable, especially with questionable defense and baserunning skills (-1.2 BsR last year).
The Royals should instead have Melendez focus on being the hitter he was during his rookie season, which starts with him swinging less and taking more (which involves improving his pitch recognition through more film study and prep). The average will be low, and the strikeouts will make Royals fans uncomfortable. That said, at least he will draw more walks and not sacrifice the power that made him so special as a rookie and a prospect in the Royals system.
There’s still time for Melendez to do this…
However, the clock is ticking for Melendez to make this critical change to his hitting approach. If he doesn’t make it soon enough, he may be in Omaha or on another MLB (or MiLB) roster soon (which I unfortunately predicted before the season).
Photo Credit: Luke Hales/Getty Images
[…] has been made about Melendez’s struggles this year, and I already talked about him on this blog this season. However, I wanted to see his Process+ and profile with the new swing […]