Spring is a time for hope. But in the back of the minds of even the most optimistic Royals fan there are concerns about how it could all go wrong. Which players give you cause for concern?<\/p>\n
The Royals seem to be relying a lot on the performance of young hitters like Carter Jensen and Jac Caglianone. Jensen performed well, but could he struggle the more pitchers see him? Will Caglianone continue to pound the ball in the ground as he did his rookie campaign?<\/p>\n
Carlos Est\u00e9vez led the Majors in saves, but he certainly made us sweat through a lot of them. Can he still be a solid closer or does his career-worst strikeout rate last year give you pause? Does Lucas Ereceg\u2019s significant drop in strikeout rate ring alarm bells?<\/p>\n
Pitchers are always at risk of injury, and the Royals have their fair share of pitchers with a history of landing on the Injured List. Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic are both coming off injuries that cut their 2025 season short. Seth Lugo had a second-half swoon that raised questions about whether or not he can handle his workload. And Michael Wacha turns 35 years old in July – any pitcher at that age should make you a bit nervous.<\/p>\n
Which players makes you the most nervous on this roster?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spring is a time for hope. But in the back of the minds of even the most optimistic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,77247,2596,2595,4,252,72937],"class_list":{"0":"post-608287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansas-city-royals-discussion","13":"tag-kansascity","14":"tag-kansascityroyals","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-royals","17":"tag-royals-review-question-of-the-day"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116178239008802316","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}