When Royals general manager J.J. Picollo picked up the phone early Tuesday morning, about the first thing he said was that he was “playing around with different lineups” and working through all sorts of scenarios for the early season starting Friday in Atlanta.
“You just try to think through all things,” he said, laughing and adding, “And there’s no perfect answer. There’s no, ‘Here it is.’”
Even so, the Royals believe they have plenty of answers to lift them back to the postseason after they sagged out of the playoffs last year.
That was a particularly disappointing setback because of what was implied by the stirring 2024 season, which featured a 30-win improvement from the year before, their first postseason games since winning the World Series in 2015 and the emergence of Bobby Witt Jr. as one of the faces of Major League Baseball.
The twist, though, is that for the most part any return to glory will largely pivot on much the same cast, supplemented by a handful of new players with fine profiles …
But not the monster extra bat(s) the Royals — and fans — had hoped they’d add.
In fact, at least entering the 2026 season, the single most overt change from a year ago isn’t so much personnel-based as it is the dimensional analysis that led the Royals to move in the fences at Kauffman Stadium.
At Royals Rally in January, first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino aptly summed up the rationale.
“Most people that follow baseball would agree the Royals have always built their teams in specific ways, which was to fit the ballpark,” he said. “The Royals have not traditionally won a ton of games.”
But don’t confuse an absence of dramatic moves with settling for a status quo as the Royals seek just their fourth postseason berth since 1985.
It’s just that Picollo thinks it’s time for the young Royals to flip the switch.
When I asked him in January about the Royals realizing along the way last year that they needed more veteran leadership, Picollo said he had put a lot of thought into that dynamic — especially when it comes to the young nucleus of Bobby Witt Jr., Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia.
“When you are getting into Year 3, 4 and 5 in the major leagues, at some point it’s your time,” he said. “Right now, Bobby, Vinnie, Maikel, it’s your time.”
A step toward that was each, among other Royals, making his presence known in the World Baseball Classic. Pasquantino became the face of Team Italy and hit three home runs in a game; Witt made some awe-inspiring defensive plays; and Garcia was named most valuable player of the WBC for Team Venezuela.
“Their role in the game is greater now than it’s ever been prior to this,” Picollo said. “They’re all sensing that responsibility, and they take pride in it.”
Another emerging case in point is embodied in expectations for outfielder Jac Caglianone and catcher Carter Jensen in their first full seasons.
Jensen was terrific in September and has earned a chance to split time behind the plate with star Salvador Perez. Caglianone struggled a great deal, but his potential is mind-boggling and the Royals believe he has some traction now.
“There’s no doubt it was hard on him … (to) jump to the major leagues a year after he got out of college,” Picollo said, later adding, “As much as we said, ‘we don’t need you to carry the offense, we just need you to be part of the offense,’ he’s a young guy, and he wanted to make impressions.”
This spring, Picollo was encouraged by how hard — and successfully — Caglianone was working on pitch selection.
“He’s going to figure it out,” he said. “We just have to be patient with him, give him the opportunities and pick the right spots. … He’s going to be in the lineup quite often early in the season, and we want to just keep seeing continual progress.”
Meanwhile, the more certain upside of not making a blockbuster trade is not giving up serious resources.
In this case, by not parting with any of their wealth of starting pitching depth, the Royals have bolstered a stellar rotation decimated by injuries last season.
Beyond Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, Kris Bubic and Noah Cameron, the Royals feel confident they have several immediately capable arms in the inevitable event of injuries — including Ryan Bergert, (optioned to Triple-A Omaha), Stephen Kolek (on the 15-day injured list with an oblique strain) and Bailey Falter, who will begin the season as the long man out of the bullpen.
With the Royals in 2025 losing out on what Picollo estimated was 25% of their starts from the opening day rotation, they now feel they are deep enough to have substantial options “at a moment’s notice.”
That’s going to always give the Royals a chance from the get-go, which was the key factor in their 2024 turnaround.
And the bullpen highlighted by Carlos Estevez and Lucas Erceg augmented by the addition of Matt Strahm figures to give them an advantage in putting away games.
Which brings us to the pesky in-between: Only five teams in MLB scored fewer runs in 2025 than the Royals’ 651.
And that was with Witt Jr., Perez, Pasquantino and Garcia enjoying strong seasons — including driving in a combined 375 of their runs.
Some remedial improvements in base-running could help change that. And the Royals expect that Jensen and Caglianone will figure in boosting it.
So would having Witt return to 2024 numbers (109 RBIs vs. 88 a year ago, for instance), and Pasquantino averting an early slump like the one that beset him last year as he returned from a broken right thumb.
But it also needs to come from the margins, so to speak, of the 6-9 slots in the lineup, which generally will include second baseman Jonathan India seeking a bounce-back season and a mix-and-match outfield of Caglianone (who also could hit fifth), Kyle Isbel and newcomers Isaac Collins, Lane Thomas and Starling Marte.
While calling it coincidental, Picollo noted that last season’s outfield production was among the least productive in baseball even as KC’s infield — including Perez at catcher — was among the most prolific groups in more than a dozen categories.
So having the bottom of the lineup just rise to average, the GM said, could be another difference-maker.
All of which is nothing perfect, of course. And a good number of these x-factors will have to play out right for the Royals to be better enough to make the playoffs.
But there also seem to be ample reasons the Royals can make a jump … even if it has to be largely driven by coming of age from within.
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Vahe Gregorian has been a sports columnist for The Kansas City Star since 2013 after 25 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has covered a wide spectrum of sports, including 10 Olympics. Vahe was an English major at the University of Pennsylvania and earned his master’s degree at Mizzou.