The Royals lost the first game of their weekend series against the Detroit Tigers 7-5 on Friday. It was a deflating loss in front of 28,875 Royals faithful, many who came out early for the Big Slick Celebrity Softball game before Friday’s contest.
On a positive note, the Royals’ offense came out of their shell a bit on Friday evening, despite the loss.
Kansas City collected 12 hits and five runs against Casey Mize and the Tigers’ bullpen. The Royals hit the ball hard on Friday night, as evidenced by a 60.7% hard-hit rate, 14.3% barrel rate, and .311 xBA. Unfortunately, the Tigers outperformed the Royals in terms of barrel rate (15.4%), and that (and three home runs) seemed to be the difference.
Despite the promising performance last night, the Royals’ offense remains a frustrating ordeal for fans, which explains why their record isn’t better than 30-28, despite having elite pitching.
As of Saturday, according to Fangraphs, the Royals’ offense ranks 26th in OPS, 28th in runs scored, and 30th in home runs. In terms of the latter, Bobby Witt Jr. added to that season total on Friday with his sixth home run of the season (which hopefully can help him snap out of his recent slump).
Even though the Royals’ power metrics don’t look great, they do rank 15th in batting average and 12th in stolen bases. Thus, the Kansas City offense is at least doing some things well and isn’t a total lost cause.
Hence, a change here or there, whether it’s the addition of a hitter from Triple-A (cough…Jac Caglianone…) or through a trade (cough…Jesus Sanchez….) could help the Royals be an average offense, which should help them improve in the W-L column.
Nonetheless, neither move will happen quickly. Caglianone will still need some time in Omaha to work in right field, though his power continues to impress, as evidenced by his latest Triple-A home run last night.
Additionally, teams are still determining their threshold for possible trades. Even though the Royals will likely be ahead of other teams when it comes to making trades (a characteristic of JJ Picollo as a GM), it may be until mid to late June before fans see the addition of a hitter to the lineup.
Despite this, I was curious about the hitting of this Royals lineup and what the exit velocity and expected metrics looked like from this group of hitters. Royals hitting coach Alec Zumwalt and his team have emphasized improving hard contact since taking over in 2022. Are the Royals meeting that goal? Or has there been regression from last year, which explains their lackluster ranking in runs scored and a negative run differential (and 28-30 expected W-L).
Let’s dive into the exit velocity and expected wOBA metrics this season on both a team and individual level, and what we can take away from that data (and whether it should change the outlook of this current group of hitters).
Royals Team Exit Velocity in 2025 (And How It Compares to 2024)
When it came to analyzing exit velocity data, I focused on four primary metrics (also defined as follows):
- Sweet Spot%: A batted-ball event with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees.
- Average Exit Velocity: How fast, in miles per hour, a ball was hit by a batter on average.
- Hard-Hit%: Statcast defines a ‘hard-hit ball’ as one hit with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher.
- Barrel%: A batted ball with the perfect combination of exit velocity and launch angle.
I organized the data table by barrel rate, since barrels tend to have the most positive outcome with batted-ball success. Here’s how the Royals broke down as a team in that category.
As Royals fans can see, Kansas City has the second-worst barrel rate in baseball with a 6.6% mark. They also rank 24th in hard-hit rate with a 39% mark. However, they are around average in the other categories. They rank 14th in average exit velocity on batted balls (89.5 MPH) and 16th in Sweet-Spot percentage (33.3%).
The Royals are showing the ability to hit the ball hard (a decent average exit velocity), but are just unable to do it consistently (a low hard-hit rate). Furthermore, they have been able to launch the ball decently (average sweet-spot percentage), but have not been able to do it with an elite exit velocity (low barrel rate).
Thus, there are signs for fans to be hopeful about these Royals hitters on a batted-ball end, at least on a team-wide basis.
Now, let’s take a look at how the Royals fared as a team in those categories back in 2024.
The Royals last season fared much better in three of the four exit velocity categories. They ranked seventh in hard-hit rate (40.5%) and fourth in average EV (89.5 MPH). While the hard-hit rate was 1.5 percent higher last year, the average EV remains the same as it was a season ago. Hence, the Royals aren’t hitting the ball less hard; other teams are just hitting the ball harder this season.
Last season, Kansas City ranked 18th in barrel rate with a 7.4% mark. That’s only a 0.8% difference from last year. Furthermore, they ranked 27th in sweet-spot percentage with a 32.2% mark. Not only is that 11 spots lower than this season, but it’s also 1.1% down.
Therefore, the Royals have made some key adjustments in how they launch the ball compared to last season. That is encouraging and demonstrates the positive impact of the talent they have brought and the adjustments of the Royals’ hitters (and coaching staff).
They just haven’t been able to produce hard-hits consistently, which has deflated their barrels and their ability to generate runs.
How Do Royals Hitters Fare in These Exit Velocity Metrics (This Year And Last)?
So, we know how the Royals have done as a team compared to the rest of the league in key exit velocity metrics from 2025 and 2024.
How do the Royals fare on an individual end?
I broke all those down in the following table, organized by barrel rate, and included all Royals hitters with at least one batted-ball event (BBE).
Luke Maile leads the team in barrel rate, but he only had eight at-bats with the Royals before being designated for assignment and outrighted to Omaha. Nick Loftin has been impressive with an 11.1% barrel rate and a 66.7% sweet-spot percentage. However, his 22.2% hard-hit rate raises questions about whether or not he will be able to maintain that double-digit barrel rate consistently.
On a positive note, Salvador Perez fares positively in hard-hit metrics, which is essential for the future since he is such a key hitter in this Royals lineup.
Salvy has the best barrel rate of Royals regulars with a 13.1% mark. He also has the best hard-hit rate (47.5%), and fourth-best average EV (90.6 MPH) and sweet-spot percentage (36.3%). The seeds of a productive hitter are there, even though he is hitting .223 with a .614 OPS. Therefore, I remain hopeful that Salvy could be due for a turnaround in June, even though he probably won’t reach the heights of his 27-homer and .786 OPS campaign in 2024.
He has regressed recently in his sweet-spot percentage, via his rolling sweet-spot chart from Savant. That development (and whether he can rebound) will be a key thing to follow as we hit the summer months.
If he can get an uptick in sweet-spot percentage, he could see more barrels and productive results, especially since his hard-hit rate has seen a positive trend recently, according to Savant.
Another one who sported intriguing exit velocity data was MJ Melendez, who is currently in Omaha.
Melendez ranked second in barrel rate behind Salvy with an 11.1% mark. In terms of Royals regulars, he also still ranks fourth in hard-hit rate (44.4%) and fifth in average EV (90.1 MPH).
The main issue, when it came to batted-ball quality, is that MJ struggled to launch the ball. He sported the seventh-worst sweet-spot percentage in this sample with a 29.6% mark. Only Mark Canha, Freddy Fermin, Kyle Isbel, Hunter Renfroe, Dairon Blanco, and John Rave had worse marks in sweet-spot percentage.
When it comes to how MJ is faring right now in Omaha, solely on a batted-ball end, he’s once again hitting the ball hard and barreling pitches well. Unfortunately, he continues to struggle to launch the ball, even against Triple-A pitching consistently.
When it comes to how the Royals individually fared in these exit velocity metrics last season, the table below shows their performance in similar categories in 2024.
Last year, Bobby led the pack in barrel rate with a 14.3% mark, unsurprising considering his AL MVP runner-up campaign.
Unfortunately, Witt has seen a slight regression in his barrel rate, down to 3.3% from last season. He has also seen a 0.3 MPH decline in average EV and a 1.9% regression in the hard-hit rate. That said, his sweet-spot percentage is 1.9% higher, which means that if his hard-hit ability can uptick a little bit in June, he could see his barrel rate bounce back to 2024 levels (or even beyond).
One interesting case from this sample is Michael Massey, who’s having a rough 2025.
In 198 plate appearances, Massey is hitting .209 with a .495 OPS. His barrel rate is paltry at 3.1%, and his 31.9% hard-hit rate and 87.5 MPH average EV rank 13th and 14th, respectively, of Royals hitters this season.
Interestingly enough, Massey has always been able to launch the baseball well.
In 2024, his 34.4% sweet-spot percentage ranked sixth among Royals hitters. This season, he’s maintained the same sweet-spot rate, which ranks eighth. Unfortunately, his 1.7 MPH decline in average EV and five percent decline in hard-hit rate have correlated with a four percent decline in barrel rate. Thus, despite a strong launch ability, his batted-ball quality regression has resulted in one of his worst seasons at the Major League level in his career.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like his hard-hit rate is trending in the right direction anytime soon, via his rolling hard-hit chart from Savant.
I know many have been critical of Massey, and perhaps demoting him to Triple-A to work on some aspects of his swing. If they do, I would be curious to see if they can help him make adjustments to his swing so he can regain the batted-ball quality he had in 2024.
Doing so in a lower-leverage environment could be precisely what Massey needs at this time, mainly since so much of his hitting success hinges on his batted ball exit velocity (he just isn’t ever going to be a disciplined hitter, as evidenced by his career 4.4% walk rate).
Do the Expected Metrics Show Any Signs of Positive Regression?
When examining expected metrics, I focused solely on wOBA instead of batting average or slugging, primarily because wOBA encompasses all aspects of a hitter’s performance.
Therefore, in the table below, I included wOBA, xwOBA (expected wOBA), and the difference between those two metrics (wOBA-xwOBA).
The Royals rank 24th in wOBA difference with a -0.020 mark. They are ahead of the Blue Jays, White Sox, Nationals, Mets, and Rangers. Of that group, only the Blue Jays (29-28) and the Mets (35-22) have a better record. Conversely, on a run differential end, the Royals lag behind the Rangers and Mets (they are slightly better than the Toronto Blue Jays by three runs).
The issue with the Royals is that while there is a decent negative difference between wOBA and xwOBA, it’s not as if they fare well in either category individually. Their .292 wOBA ranks 26th, and their .313 xwOBA ranks 25th. Thus, they still are subpar not just on an actual hitting end, but in expected metrics as well.
Here’s how the Royals individually break down in wOBA and xwOBA this season.
The players who have seen the most significant negative difference between actual and expected wOBA are Salvy (16th), MJ (15th), Cavan Biggio (13th), and Jonathan India (11th). Isbel (2nd), Drew Waters (3rd), Maikel Garcia (4th), Canha (5th), and Fermin (6th) all have a positive difference, which could indicate they are due for regression soon. Canha and Waters would be the ones I expected to regress the most in June, primarily based on their batted-ball metrics.
Surprisingly, there hasn’t been a tremendous difference for Witt or Massey, who rank 7th and 8th in wOBA difference. Witt’s xwOBA is .373, so there is some hope that he can get back to high-performing levels soon (and his homer on Friday indicates that may be happening soon). Conversely, even though there is a 28-point difference for Massey, he still is only producing a .248 xwOBA, which is the fourth-worst mark of any Royals hitter currently on the active roster (Tyler Tolbert and MJ are in Omaha).
The expected metrics only highlight a need for Massey to be demoted and replaced by someone more productive.
Is that Jac? Is that Cam Devanney? Is that someone from outside the organization via trade?
I guess Royals fans will find out in the coming weeks in June.
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