A year after a 30-game turnaround that will endure as one of the most remarkable one-season transformations in MLB history, it was easy to anticipate an encore of something more for the Royals: an American League Central title, for starters, and a deeper postseason run.
No wonder 2025 was a deflating season for fans. And no doubt it was frustrating for general manager J.J. Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro on Tuesday to be conducting a season wrap-up news conference at Kauffman Stadium as the playoffs were getting underway.
Handled properly, though, this season still can serve as a bridge to the future and better days ahead because of a further-emerging nucleus and baseline it still appears to establish.
Because there’s still something happening here … even if it was obscured by a step back.
Yes, a barely winning record (8280) might seem like a hollow token.
Except for it’s in the recent wake of averaging 99.6 losses over the previous five full seasons (not including the pandemic-shortened slate) before 2024.
And that it’s just the franchise’s sixth winning season this century.
And it represents only the second sequence since 1994 (2013-2015 was the other) in which the club has mustered multiple winning seasons in a row.
Look, there’s no champagne to pop open for this. And it wouldn’t have any fizz, anyway.
It’s just that there’s plenty more reason to think this year will become a link in a chain of stability and upward mobility than that it represents the abrupt end of a reset.
At least as long as the Royals indeed shore up the maddening things they can control but too often failed to this season.
First, some context: You simply can’t appraise their season without pointing to receiving 26 fewer starts combined from their two 2024 AL Cy Young finalists (Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans) and that their best 2025 starter, All-Star Kris Bubic, was sidelined the last couple months.
Ragans returned with a flourish, and all three are expected to be back at full capacity in the spring.
Yes, injuries are part of the game, and there’s a thin line between reasons and excuses. But that was brutal.
Meanwhile, the Royals this season further extended their core group, with All-Star selection Maikel Garcia now joining Bobby Witt Jr., Sal Perez (expected to return) and Vinnie Pasquantino as the essentials. Carlos Estévez led MLB in saves and rookie Noah Cameron highlighted the development of enticing depth in the rotation.
Add it all up, and this season was more of an exasperating shortfall than a stumble — even if some stunning scoring droughts and recklessness on the basepaths conjured that feeling at times.
Yes, they needed more nimble fixes for those issues in real time — and their ability to adapt faster to such matters should be part of the self-audit they’re about to undertake.
Within his first words Tuesday, Picollo said, “We’ve got to learn from it, build on it and move on from here.”
Asked what in particular stood out to him in that way, he began by saying “there’s a lot of different ways to answer that.”
That starts with the humility and self-awareness of Picollo and Quatraro to speak to it all and what each of them can do better.
Not merely with the media but going forward in the offseason — during which the Royals have some pivotal work to do if this season is going to prove a springboard instead of a fallback.
While the Royals are sticking with hitting coach Alec Zumwalt despite finishing 26th in runs scored and managing fewer than four runs 85 times (tied for third-worst in MLB), Picollo signaled that there might be some tweaking of staff as they ask themselves: “What don’t we have? What can we do from an analyst standpoint, from a holistic standpoint, to try to help our offense improve?”
And answer why they scored 84 fewer runs this season than 2024. Despite some otherwise similar metrics between seasons, Picollo put it best when he said, “Why didn’t the offense function as a whole?”
On the surface, anyway, that’s linked to the difference in batting with runners in scoring position from 2024 to 2025: The Royals were fifth in MLB with a .282 average a year ago but 21st with a .255 average this season even after some improvement in the second half.
But their real trouble was ultimately about what goes into any hitting, particularly pitch selection, and lack of offensive production from the outfield much of the season.
A nd in perhaps the most vexing part of what went awry: the sheer fundamentals of advancing runners and smart baserunning vital to a small-market team hard-pressed to pay for the biggest sluggers and playing in a cavernous stadium.
The “certain type of game that we need to play,” as Picollo put it, hinges on that stuff that the Royals regressed on this season.
The formula doesn’t include being picked off an MLB-worst 21 times or being caught stealing the fifthmost times (42), among other misadventures on the basepaths.
Solving, or at least improving, that will be among what Quatraro reckons are a million or so different things that go into a baseball season.
“That’s the challenge,” Quatraro said. “That’s the art of it.”
The Royals learned a few other things this season, too.
Like the fact they needed more seasoned leadership — which is why veteran outfielder Mike Yastrzemski remains “a player of interest” to be brought back, Picollo said, because of his influence from the clubhouse to the batting cage.
And they learned that Jonathan India belongs in the infield, not the outfield. And that Jac Caglianone is too good for Triple A but has to get the ball in the air to thrive as a bigleaguer.
Also that catcher Carter Jensen showed enough in September that there’s ample reason to be excited about him in 2026.
And that they’ve now got such an apparent starting pitching surplus, keyed by the Freddy Fermin trade for Ryan Bergert and Steven Kolek, that they’ll either have substantial depth or assets to trade for a major bat that remains their greatest need.
It’s hard to know if they can afford to add such a bat this offseason with a budget Picollo figured will be in the “140-ish” million range. But producing more three-run homers, Picollo said, looking toward Quatraro, would make the manager’s job easier by giving him less to do.
Even so, the most controllable way for them to maximize their potential goes back to what Picollo called playing “a complete game” they like to think of as the Royals way.
The little big things. Built on pitching and defense and getting on base and running the bases and, most of all … “You got to get ‘em over,” he said, “and get ‘em in.”
To show that last season really wasn’t a mirage.
And that this one really was part of something more to come instead of something easy to rationalize right now.
