The Royals appear to have rediscovered their mojo on the basepaths
No team in Major League Baseball has played better than the Royals since Easter.
The Royals have won 15 of 17 since April 20, which was Easter Day, so insert your own resurrection joke here if you’d like.
During the Royals’ hot stretch of play, they’ve also been more efficient in stealing bases. Before the start of last week’s road trip, the Royals had been successful on just 62.5% of their stolen base attempts (20 steals and caught stealing 12 times).
That was last in Major League Baseball and a huge drop from their 2024 rate in which the Royals were successful on 80.3% of their stolen-base attempts.
However, with three stolen bases in their 10-0 win over the White Sox on Thursday, the Royals have been successful on 15 of their last 16 stolen-base attempts.
“I think we’ve gotten better jumps lately,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “But as we’ve talked about with getting thrown out, there are a lot of pieces into that. And we ran into some catchers that made some really good throws, some pitchers that held us. We were struggling to score runs, so maybe we tried to force the issue a little bit more than we needed to.”
The Royals’ stolen base percentage is now up to 73% on the season, which ranks 24th in the majors.
Being aggressive is part of the Royals’ DNA, and success on the basepaths goes hand in hand with winning. Quatraro wants players like Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia and Drew Waters to run when they can. .
“The guys that can run, we want them to run, and the other team knows that,” Quatraro said. “Everybody knows that when Maikel and Bobby and Drew and those guys are on base, that’s something we need to do, because we’re not hitting a ton of home runs or three-run doubles, those kinds of things.
“That’s part of our game. But if that’s our skill, we’ve got to keep doing it.”
