Kansas City Royals 2025 preview
Owner John Sherman set an example for every mid-market team to follow based on what happened with the 2024 Kansas City Royals. The emergence of Bobby Witt Jr. as an elite player helped, but so did the signings of Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo. A certain degree of luck is required in each and every transaction, but Lugo had a 3.00 ERA with a 3.25 FIP over 206.2 innings and Wacha had a 3.35 ERA with a 3.65 FIP over 166.2 innings. Those 373.1 innings were worth eight wins above replacement player for just $31 million. That is an unbelieve return on investment.
When all the dust settled, the Royals, led by their starting rotation and the arrival of a superstar, improved by 30 games in the win column and pulled off a Wild Card Round upset against the Orioles before getting knocked out by the eventual AL champion Yankees. It was one of the biggest turnarounds in recent memory and one spearheaded by a little bit of smart spending.
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As great as Cole Ragans was, what the Royals got from Wacha and Lugo propelled the postseason push and served as a reminder that you don’t have to spend wildly to find success. You just have to spend intelligently. Does that make it sustainable for this season? Not necessarily, but the Royals hadn’t had a winning season since 2015 and now have a lot more hope than they had before Sherman took over.
Putting the right people in place helps, too. Matt Quatraro suffered through his first season as manager, but the Kevin Cash and Terry Francona disciple blossomed into one of the AL’s top skippers with last season’s efforts. Pitching coach Brian Sweeney, formerly the Guardians bullpen coach, took the pitching staff and ran with it in Year 2. J.J. Picollo stuck around long enough for Dayton Moore to move on and got a new contract extension in mid-February to remain GM and EVP into the next decade.
Now for the dose of potential reality. Lugo set a career-high in innings pitched and fWAR in his age-34 and turned 35 in November. Wacha pitched the most innings he’s thrown since 2015 and set a new high in fWAR. He’ll turn 34 in July. Ragans went from 124.1 innings to 186.1. The offense, even with Witt’s extreme contributions, ranked 14th in wOBA, 20th in wRC+, and he accounted for 10.4 of the 20 fWAR from position players.
How does all of that play out in 2025?
2025 Kansas City Royals Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Feb. 25)
World Series: +3000
AL Pennant: +1300
AL Central: +270
Win Total: 83.5 (-110/-110)
Make Playoffs: Yes +110 / No -130
Kansas City Royals Preview: Offense
It should be noted that the 20 fWAR from the Royals mostly came from their defensive prowess. According to FanGraphs’ all-encompassing Def metric for defensive value, the Royals were second at 35.4. Only the Blue Jays (40.5) were higher. The Royals did lead all of baseball in Outs Above Average, the Statcast fielding metric. From an offensive value standpoint, the Royals were -21.2 batting and baserunning runs per FanGraphs. Witt accounted for 59.3 of the batting and baserunning runs. The others in positive figures? Salvador Perez (5.6), Vinnie Pasquantino (3.4), Dairon Blanco (3.2), Michael Massey (1.3). That’s it.
Those were the only four hitters with a positive wRC+, so they were the only four hitters above league average for the Royals. Witt’s incredible season resulted in a 168 wRC+ with a .332/.389/.588 slash and a .410 wOBA. Five players had a wOBA over .400. Two won the MVP in Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. The other two were Juan Soto and Yordan Alvarez. That’s as elite of company as you can keep.
Is what Witt did sustainable? Yes and no. I think there’s more power production in there than the 32 homers that he had. I don’t think he’ll run a .354 BABIP this season, even though his contact quality was spectacular. Witt was one of six players with a BABIP over .350. There were only five players two seasons ago. None of them did it again this past season. Even with modest batted ball regression, Witt should be one of the game’s 10 most productive players again.
But what about everyone else on the Royals roster? Pasquantino came back from a shoulder injury and had a strong season with a .325 wOBA and a 108 wRC+, but he is a guy that struggles to maximize his contact authority and bat-to-ball skills. He had an 80th percentile Hard Hit% and good expected numbers, but he has average bat speed and doesn’t really square up the ball terribly well. A big spike in pull-side contact didn’t lead to a big increase in SLG.
I’m selling Perez this season. His BB% more than doubled while his K% dropped 3.5%. He ran a BABIP over .300 for the first time since 2013. He did run a really nice 12.2% Barrel% and he’s always had the power to his name, but he’s still a free swinger with holes in the zone that I would expect to return. Similarly, I’m selling Massey, who might just be coming into his own, but his contact metrics don’t support a big power spike and he virtually never walks. A sub-.300 OBP only works if you can back it up with more power production.
Jonathan India is a really nice addition and the Royals traded from a position of strength by sending Brady Singer to Cincinnati. India had a 108 wRC+ last season after posting two below average seasons in 2022 and 2023. However, he’s also a guy who benefited from the park in Cincinnati with a 112 wRC+ compared to a 102 on the road and I don’t know that he’ll repeat that playing half of his games at Kauffman Stadium.
Hope is on the horizon for more power with Jac Caglianone, but the 22-year-old struggled a bit with High-A pitching in his first season of pro ball and I doubt he’s a factor for 2025.
Kansas City Royals Preview: Pitching
While the offense was mostly carried by Witt, the pitching side of things was a total team effort for the Royals. Overall, they were seventh in ERA at 3.76 and fourth in FIP at 3.76. The starting staff really did a ton of heavy lifting, finishing second in ERA, fourth in FIP, and second in innings pitched. Only the Mariners were better than the Royals in all three categories.
As I’ve said already, I have major concerns about the health and sustainability of this group. Five starters made at least 25 starts and four of them made at least 29 starts. Singer’s 179.2 innings need to be replaced, with some of that burden going to Trade Deadline acquisition Michael Lorenzen, who wound up only making six starts after the deal, and Alec Marsh, who made 25 starts over 128 innings.
As much as I like Ragans, I think we’ve seen the peak for him. Projection systems are all regressing him back to an ERA in the 3.50 range after he had a 3.14 last season with a sub-3.00 FIP. Some growth could be possible, but his BB% really did spike in August and September as he tired. He still racked up strikeouts, but he had a 10.8% BB% in August and an 11.6% BB% in September. He rallied for an outstanding start against Houston in the AL Wild Card Round, but it’s a concern I do have after such a big workload bump.
Lugo, who is signed for this season and has an option for next year, posted a 7.4% HR/FB% last season. He had never been below 10% for any other season in his career. After primarily working in relief from 2018-22, he’s now made 59 starts over the last two seasons and just had his first 200-inning campaign, plus another 9.1 in the postseason. I think Lugo will still be plenty viable, as he’s been a terrific arm throughout most of his career, but I’d be shocked to see the Royals get 33 starts and 200 innings from him again.
Similarly, Wacha, who signed a three-year extension with the Royals this winter, had an 8.5% HR/FB% a year after a career-best 9.1% HR/FB% in a season with at least 20 starts. He had a 3.35 ERA, but a 4.05 xERA to go with his 3.65 FIP and 4.14 xFIP. All of the projection systems are regressing him back to an ERA north of 4.00. I don’t know that that happens given the Royals defense and their effectiveness with cutting down home run rates, but, again, are we getting 160+ innings from Wacha? Are we getting a 15% pop up rate to offset the K% decrease?
The back end of the rotation and the depth options are underwhelming, though I do low-key like the mid-February signing of Ross Stripling. Marsh, Daniel Lynch, Kris Bubic, and the like seem interchangeable to me. Bubic was used as a reliever last season after only making three MLB starts in 2023. Lorenzen had a brutal K/BB ratio last season and outperformed his xERA, FIP, and xFIP by a wide margin. Lynch might be a breakout guy now that he’s healthy and some analysts do like him a lot.
I do like the bullpen with a full season of Erceg and new closer Carlos Estevez. This is a solid unit and a strength of the ballclub. As for the rotation, though, I’m expecting some fairly extreme regression in both performance and health.
Kansas City Royals Player to Watch
ALL OF THEM
I purposely saved this for now. The numbers regressed to the mean as the season went along, but the Royals finished with a .260/.322/.420 slash at home with a .320 wOBA and a 100 wRC+. On the road, KC batted .236/.291/.388 with a .295 wOBA and a 92 wRC+.
In the first half, the Royals hit .267/.330/.444 at home with a .333 wOBA and a 109 wRC+. They hit .227/.281/.368 with a .283 wOBA and an 83 wRC+ on the road. Hitting better at home is not an anomaly by any means, but there was a long stretch of the season where the Royals were among the best offenses in baseball at home and hit like the White Sox on the road.
I’m not sure why. I don’t know what happened and why it changed. It may have simply been in-season variance. All I know is that it skewed the numbers quite a bit. Look at the home/road splits for some of the hitters. The splits for Bobby Witt Jr., specifically, made up a lot of the discrepancy.
Home: .382/.441/.676, 202 wRC+, .466 wOBA
Away: .284/.340/.505, 134 wRC+, .356 wOBA
So, something to watch, I guess.
Kansas City Royals Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
I think it’s pretty clear where I fall on the Royals. I am expecting regression across the board for this team. Even though they had a 91-71 Pythagorean Win-Loss, that would normally encourage me when their actual record fell five wins under that, I think this team got extremely fortunate last season to have the pitcher health that they did and such a massive season from Witt that he overcame a bunch of poor teammates on offense.
Defensively, this team should be good again, but there were too many outliers for me to believe this season. And their win total line is already a few games lower, so the markets have accounted for this. This team hasn’t really improved except for the bullpen and I don’t think that will be enough when the rotation comes back to earth and the offense continues to be driven by what may very well be a lesser version of Witt.
Pick: Under 83.5
