The Royals clinched the weekend and season series against the Orioles on Sunday, winning an 11-6 slugfest in Baltimore. Both teams combined to hit 11 home runs (10 solo shots), with the Royals hitting seven, a single-game club record.
The victory gave the Royals a 5-1 record on the road trip and improved their record to 19-16. The Royals are still in third place in the AL Central (they are three games behind the first-place Tigers. However, their run differential is positive again, and they have a favorable homestand coming up against the White Sox (10-24) and the Red Sox (18-18).
Michael Lorenzen didn’t have his best stuff on Sunday, as he allowed five runs in 4.2 innings of work. However, his performance (and the bullpen) was good enough with the offense scorching the ball at Camden Yards.
After scoring 15 runs in two games (they were shut out in game one), I focused on the hitters in this edition of the Royals Three-Star awards presented by the Crown Talk Podcast (which will be dropping on Monday).
First Star: Maikel Garcia (6 H, 2 HR, 2 R, 3 RBI, 1 BB, 0 K)
After a disappointing 2024, Garcia has been on an absolute tear to begin the 2025 campaign.
In 132 plate appearances, the 25-year-old infielder is putting up a slash of .319/.379/.496 with a .875 OPS. He’s already hit four home runs this year and stolen seven bases, making him a threat to be a 10-15-HR and 25-30-SB player this season. Royals fans expected a multi-HR-SB threat from Bobby Witt Jr. at the beginning of the year. However, it looks like Garcia could be a similar threat (albeit with fewer home runs).
Garcia’s home runs have been nice to see, especially on Sunday, as he launched two home runs over the left field wall in Baltimore. His last one tied the game up and helped spark the Royals’ offense to collect six more runs off the Orioles’ bullpen.
That said, his performance at the plate has gone beyond just bombs. He’s hitting the ball harder than ever and showing a disciplined approach that he was known for as a prospect in the Royals system.
His TJ Summary card demonstrates his proficiency in the hard-hit rate and exit velocity metrics, and his encouraging strikeout and whiff rate numbers this season.
Garcia isn’t chasing (20.6% O-Swing%), whiffing (14.9% whiff rate), or striking out (14.7% K rate). Furthermore, he’s shown a strong ability to hit various pitches. As of Sunday, he has a wOBACON of .342 or higher against all pitch varieties (fastball, breaking, off-speed) this year.
It’s unsurprising that Garcia has climbed up the batting order and seen time in the cleanup (when Salvador Perez is out) and five-hole spots. He has been the Royals’ most consistent hitter behind Witt, especially when one looks at Garcia’s expected wOBA rolling chart this season via Savant.
Furthermore, one could argue that he’s been slightly better than Witt, which is remarkable considering Witt had a 22-game hitting streak this season.
Second Star: Vinnie Pasquantino (4 H, 1 2B, 2 HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, 0 BB, 1 K)
It’s been a rough start for Vinnie, who’s failed to offer much at the plate in 2025. However, it seems like Pasquantino is finally getting into a groove, which has been key in turning the Royals’ offense around during this latest road trip.
In 107 plate appearances in April, Vinnie slashed .172/.224/.283 with a .507 OPS. He had three home runs and 14 RBI, but he also struck out 22 times and only walked seven times last month.
It’s been a much different story in May for Vinnie.
In 19 plate appearances, he is slashing .316/.316/.737 with a 1.053 OPS. He has two home runs and four RBI. While he hasn’t walked this month, he has only struck out twice. That’s a sign that his plate discipline and approach are improving.
Pasquantino hit bombs in the Royals’ wins on Saturday and Sunday, with his latest bomb coming against reliever Yennier Cano, who hadn’t allowed a run this season before Sunday’s game (though he had given up a bomb to Witt in the previous at-bat).
The wOBA and xwOBA of his batted-ball and plate discipline metrics via TJ Stats don’t look great. However, he’s seeing some positive signs in his barrel rate, exit velocity, and hard-hit metrics, which were low marks at the beginning of the season.
Vinnie has done decently against the fastball (.284 wOBACON) and well against breaking offerings (0.390 wOBACON). However, he’s struggled against off-speed pitches, evidenced by his 0.152 wOBACON, 34.5% whiff rate, and 42.0% O-Swing%.
The better Vinnie can perform against off-speed pitches, even slightly, the better his profile will start to look overall (and he’s beginning to see an incremental bump in rolling wOBA and an encouraging decline in rolling K%, which are also good signs).
Third Star: Michael Massey (4 H, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 R, 2 RBI, 0 BB, 1 K)
Massey’s surface-level metrics don’t look great, which I discussed in this week’s recent post about him.
In 121 plate appearances, he’s slashing .204/.217/.265 with a .482 OPS. However, the 27-year-old second baseman took some positive steps at the plate in the weekend series in Baltimore.
Massey not only collected four hits against the Orioles, but he also hit his first home run of the year and collected two RBI to boot. His first home run of the season not only had an exit velocity of 99.6 MPH and traveled 404 feet, but also would’ve been out of all 30 MLB ballparks.
It’s easy to look at Massey’s slash line and think that the second baseman should be in Omaha along with MJ Melendez. However, in May, he sports a line of .294/.278/.529 with a .807 OPS in 18 plate appearances. Furthermore, Massey has shown more promising contact ability than Melendez, who was whiffing at astronomical rates before his demotion to Omaha.
Massey’s hard-hit and barrel rates aren’t as reasonable as MJ’s. However, Massey out-classes Melendez in K rate, whiff rate, and Z-Contact% by significant margins. Thus, it makes sense why Matt Quatraro and the Royals coaches are giving more grace to Massey right now and are letting him figure things out at the Major League level.
After solid performances in Tampa and Baltimore, Massey may be on his way to snapping out of his funk, especially with a four-game series against the White Sox coming home this week. In 92 career plate appearances, he has a career .329 average and 1.054 OPS against his hometown team (he grew up in Palos Park, a South Chicago suburb).
Graphic Credit: Kevin O’Brien and Jared Perkins/Crown Talk Podcast