The Kansas City Royals’ biggest issue also requires the simplest fix
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Royals scoring 3.75 runs per game; 2-3-4 hitters slugging .289 early 2026.
- Rotation ranks top-10 in ERA and fourth in quality starts despite 5-7 record.
- Team depends on core (Witt/Pasquantino/Perez) to revert to 2024/2025 form.
The best scoring chance came in the eighth inning, a rally established by Bobby Witt Jr. and Vinnie Pasquantino singles that put Salvador Perez at the plate — two on, two out with a chance to tie the game with one swing.
This is how it’s supposed to work, right?
Over the last few years, the Royals’ lineup has been built on this group coming through in these moments.
But it’s the root of their frustration at the onset of 2026.
Perez hit the ball off the end of the bat, a lazy fly to center field. The rally was gone before it gained momentum, and after the Guardians added a five-spot in the bottom half of the inning, that was that.
It’s been the early-year trend.
The Royals have scored more than five runs only twice in 12 games, and they’ve managed more than four runs only three times. The lineup is producing just 3.75 runs per game.
Thus the Royals are 5-7 despite a rotation that ranks fourth in quality starts and top-10 in earned-run average — even after Cole Ragans didn’t make it out of the first inning Wednesday afternoon in Cleveland.
It feels like a familiar story.
It’s not.
At least not completely, anyway.
The Royals’ offense had its early-season frustrations a year ago before turning it on after the All-Star break — albeit too late to make a playoff run. But those frustrations a year ago came from a different source: the bottom of the lineup.
The slumps now? They are endured by the players in which the lineup is intended to thrive.
• Bobby Witt Jr. opened the season with zero extra-base hits in his initial 11 games before he hit a double into the gap Wednesday. He only once had a streak even half that long last season, a six-game stretch without an extra-base hit in September. He had 76 extra-base hits in 2025 and 88 in 2024. He has 1 in 2026.
• Vinnie Pasquantino also has just one extra-base hit, a double, and his average sits at exactly .200.
• Salvador Perez is hitting just .156 and has driven in two runners — himself, twice.
That’s the No. 2 hitter, the No. 3 hitter and the No. 4 hitter.
Those spots in the Royals’ lineup have produced a .592 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage), 26th in the league, through the initial couple of weeks. They are slugging .289, 28th in baseball.
In 2025, the 2-3-4 spots in the Kansas City lineup combined for a .453 slugging percentage, 10th best in MLB. They compiled a .780 OPS, nearly 200 points better than where they stand now.
Look, it’s not practical to make conclusions on where the Royals are headed based on a series in Cleveland in which the temperatures only barely grew above freezing — nor the first two weeks of a season in general. The numbers will improve.
But it’s easy to make a conclusion on why a team with one of the top-performing rotations in baseball sits at 5-7. Heck, given the heart of the order, it feels fortunate they sit at 5-7. They lost a game in which a starting pitcher threw six scoreless innings, another when a starting pitcher allowed only a single unearned run in six innings and a third in which the starting pitcher allowed one run in 5 2/3 innings — all in the first dozen games.
That’s how they are here.
Where are they going?
Well, if you want to be an optimist, you have the luxury of coupling it with some reality.
The bottom of the order didn’t exactly tear it up in Cleveland, but if the three players on which the Royals’ offense depends most — or three of four, along with Maikel Garcia — hit like we’ve seen them hit, they’d be in a pretty envious spot. That group has six of the team’s 28 extra-base hits (21.4%). That will change.
If you are reliant on a group of players turning around a two-week slump — the exact equivalent of a one game and one quarter completed in Week 2 of an NFL season — wouldn’t you rather be reliant on those who have turned it around before?
Maybe that’s too optimistic. But this group compiled a .780 OPS in 2025, and it was actually even slightly better in 2024 — when the Royals had the fourth-best OPS from their 2-3-4 spots in the lineup.
There’s a foundation of success with Witt, Pasquantino and Perez, the peak with Witt and the deepest foundation with Perez. The foundation is the reason for the belief for better days.
But also the need. It’s how the Royals are built.
It doesn’t work without the foundation.