The Kansas City Royals opened up the home portion of their 2026 schedule on Monday with a 3-1 win over the Minnesota Twins, and the offense came from the most unexpected place on the roster.

All three of their runs were driven in by hitters sitting in the eighth and ninth spots of the lineup, and manager Matt Quatraro had no complaints about where the production came from.

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“We’ll take it from anybody,” Quatraro said after the game. “Good teams are going to do that – it’s not always going to be homers – but Izzy… was a big plus.”

Izzy, of course, is center fielder Kyle Isbel, who launched a two-run homer in the bottom of the second inning to give Kansas City a 2-1 lead they would never give back.

Isbel, a career .238 hitter who managed just four home runs in all of 2025, has been quietly putting together a strong start to the season and is currently hitting .400 through the Royals’ first four games.

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His blast on Monday traveled 403 feet into the bullpen in right field, and it happened on a day when the top five hitters in the lineup combined to go just 3-for-18.

Collins Makes His Mark

Then in the seventh inning, newcomer Isaac Collins added some insurance with a towering 400-foot solo shot off Twins reliever Kody Funderburk.

It was Collins’ first hit as a Royal after starting the season 0-for-8, and the fact that it left the yard felt fitting for a guy the front office brought in specifically to help address last year’s lack of depth.

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“It’s always good getting the first one out of the way,” Collins said. “And for it to be a home run was the icing on the cake.”

The Royals entered the season knowing their offense needed more help from the bottom half, and adding Collins, Lane Thomas and Starling Marte was supposed to fix that.

Monday was a small but encouraging glimpse of what that might look like.

Why This Offense Could Sneak Up on People

Kansas City sits at 2-2 heading into Wednesday’s matchup with the Twins, and while nobody is going to overreact to four games, the early signs point to an offense that could be sneakily productive.

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The Royals moved the fences in at Kauffman Stadium this offseason, shrinking the gaps in left-center and right-center by 10 feet, and all three home runs on Monday would have cleared both the old and new dimensions anyway.

But the bigger picture is that Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, Salvador Perez and Maikel Garcia still form one of the better cores in the American League, and if the bottom of the order can simply be average, this team becomes a lot more dangerous.

That was the whole idea going into the offseason, and Quatraro knows it does not have to be home runs every night. It just has to be something.

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And on Monday, the guys nobody expected to carry the load did exactly that.