It is not a stretch to say the Kansas City Royals\u2019 steadiest starter over the past two seasons has been veteran Michael Wacha. <\/p>\n
The longtime St. Louis Cardinals right-hander landed in Kansas City after years of one-year stops and has arguably delivered the two best seasons of his lengthy career. He proved his value again in 2025, leading the Royals in games started, innings pitched, and fWAR by comfortable margins.<\/p>\n
Heading into his age-34 season, Wacha is under contract for two more years and figures to be the staff\u2019s waterline once again. <\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t the ace like Cole Ragans can be when he\u2019s right<\/a>, and he isn\u2019t as volatile as Seth Lugo or Kris Bubic. He\u2019s the insurance. The kind of pitcher every team wishes it could afford: take the ball every fifth day, keep you in the game, and quietly raise the floor of a rotation. Not sexy, but highly valuable to a competitive club, and if the Royals find October again, he might be the go-to third arm in a postseason series.<\/p>\n There is deserved worry, though. Wacha exceeded expectations in both 2024 and 2025. Can he do it again in 2026? Here are a couple of reasons Royals fans shouldn\u2019t panic and two reasons that concern isn\u2019t coming out of nowhere.<\/p>\n Royals should worry because… Father Time is undefeated.<\/p>\n Justin Verlander. Clayton Kershaw. Max Scherzer. The best pitchers of their generation, and the only three active arms in 2025 with at least 200 wins. Even with all their accolades and Hall of Fame r\u00e9sum\u00e9s, none of them has beaten Father Time. Wacha won\u2019t, either.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say he becomes unplayable the moment he turns 35 later this season. Pitchers are working deeper into their careers than ever. The average MLB pitcher last year was 29.2 years old, the oldest since the same mark in 2005, and it\u2019s been a steady climb since 2021. <\/p>\n We\u2019ve also seen elite late-career examples recently, with pitchers like Chris Sale and Verlander winning Cy Young Awards well into their 30s. But for every one of those success stories, there are a dozen more who start to slip, sometimes subtly, sometimes all at once, as the birthdays stack.<\/p>\n Wacha has traits that can age well, but nobody stays good forever. At some point, the innings and the wear catch up. The only question is whether that moment comes in 2026\u2026 or after.<\/p>\n Royals shouldn’t worry because… Wacha knows how to win.<\/p>\n Many moons ago, Wacha made his name in St. Louis with October heroics. He won NLCS MVP in 2013, in a postseason where he went 4\u20131 with a 2.64 ERA across five starts. <\/p>\n He hasn\u2019t matched that exact postseason bar since, but it established something that has followed him everywhere: Wacha is steady, competitive, and rarely overwhelmed by the moment. That trait still serves him well as Kansas City\u2019s rotational barometer.<\/p>\n Pitching wins aren\u2019t the be-all, end-all, but they do reflect durability, opportunity, and a starter\u2019s ability to keep a team in it. Wacha has posted double-digit wins in four straight seasons, and his 48 wins in that span are tied for the eighth-most in baseball. <\/p>\n That\u2019s a meaningful chunk of proof that he hasn\u2019t just survived his career\u2019s bumps, but he\u2019s found a way to keep winning through them.<\/p>\n Add in that he\u2019s performed his best in high-leverage spots (2.51 Clutch, third-best among starters since 2022<\/a>), and Wacha\u2019s profile looks better than most fans realize at first glance. If the Royals give him even league-average support, his durability and feel for navigating big innings should keep him in the win column again in 2026.<\/p>\n Royals should worry because… The expected numbers were not great.<\/p>\n Expected stats can feel like alphabet soup, but they\u2019re useful context because they help separate what a pitcher controls from what\u2019s influenced by defense, luck, or sequencing. <\/p>\n Royals fans lived this on the hitting side with Salvador Perez last year. His surface line (.236 average, .446 slugging) didn\u2019t look All-Star worthy, but his expected numbers suggested he hit into a lot of bad luck: .272 xBA and .522 xSLG, plus a big gap between his .311 wOBA and .356 xwOBA.<\/p>\n Wacha\u2019s expected profile tells a less flattering story.<\/p>\n His results were strong again and his ERA\/FIP put him in a respectable starter tier. Yet, the expected versions of those stats were noticeably worse in 2025. <\/p>\n Statcast\u2019s xERA is essentially xwOBA translated onto the ERA scale, and Wacha\u2019s 4.20 xERA didn\u2019t match the rosier picture of his 3.86 ERA. That kind of gap isn\u2019t new for Wacha, either. His wOBA allowed has beaten his xwOBA allowed every season since 2020, which is either a repeatable trait\u2026 or a warning sign that the correction is always waiting.<\/p>\n xFIP<\/a> was even louder. Wacha\u2019s 4.56 xFIP sat far from his 3.66 FIP, one of the larger disparities in baseball. And when you pair that with the fact that he posted the second-worst SIERA of his career, the \u201cregression is coming\u201d alarm starts to blink a little brighter.<\/p>\n Now, the obvious counter is that expected numbers don\u2019t pitch innings; Wacha does. If he keeps getting outs, nobody in Kansas City is going to hang a banner for xFIP. But if his results slide in 2026, these were the tea leaves.<\/p>\n Royals shouldn’t worry because… Wacha still has one elite pitch.<\/p>\n This is where the Royals\u2019 own decision-making matters. During a pregame interview this past season, Dr. Daniel Mack, the Royals\u2019 Vice President and Assistant GM of Research & Development, and the leader of the club\u2019s analytics group<\/a>, talked about how Kansas City targets pitching acquisitions. One of the reasons the Royals pursued Wacha after the 2023 season was simple: the changeup.<\/p>\n