The curtain comes down on 2025

The Royals wrapped the 2025 season with a 9-2 victory over the Sacramento A’s. It was a total team offensive effort with Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr. each driving in a pair while Mike Yastrzemski clubbed a couple of solo bombs. That went along with a four-hit effort from the red-hot Michael Massey and a three-hit game from Carter Jensen, who capped his season with a solo home run.

Voila…that’s nine runs. Back in mid-April, that was a week’s worth of production.

That, ultimately, is why we’re talking about the 82-win, third-place Royals instead of the 88-win first-place playoff-bound Royals.

However, the offensive malaise that wracked this team didn’t just last for one week in mid-April. It lasted for months. They improved, at times, but overall, they just weren’t good enough.

Their record against teams with losing records was 47-30. Their record against winning teams was 35-50.

They were 24-43 against teams that qualified for the postseason.

Not good enough.

The Royals finished with a .506 winning percentage to go along with those 82 wins. That’s actually something. Visit the Royals franchise page at Baseball Reference. This is just the second time this century they’ve finished at or over .500 in consecutive years, the other time that glorious run where they did it four years in a row sandwiched around those World Series runs. You have to go back 30 years for the time this club did that.

I think the overarching theme of the newsletter this season was one of optimism. (Yeah, sort of difficult to believe after suffering through the Dayton Moore post-World Series crash leading to the Mike Matheny era.) Even with their offensive issues, the Royals floated around on the edge of contention for what seemed like most of the season. They were eight games over .500 in mid-May and seven games under in early July. The division never really felt in play, yet a Wild Card generally remained within reach.

There was a brief moment where I thought the division was up for grabs. Crazy, I know. Yet Detroit was clearly scuffling, and the Royals did improve after the trade deadline, to the point that, while they never got closer than 8.5 games back in August, it still felt like they could maybe put some heat on the Tigers.

Turns out, I was half correct. The Tigers absolutely fumbled the division away. And it was Cleveland that took advantage. They were around 12.5 games back when I was thinking the Royals could make some noise. They were 10.5 games back on September 1. And they won the damn thing.

Mind you, I was under no illusions that the Royals were a team capable of making an October run. But I did think it was possible they could turn out to be one of the six best teams in the AL. Possible…not probable. Had the Royals found a way to the postseason, though, I don’t think I would’ve given them a chance to get out of the Wild Card round.

So how do I grade this season, just a few hours removed from the final out?

I want to say that this was a disappointment, that they underachieved…that this was a failure. They wasted another excellent season from Witt, career years from Garcia and Vinnie Pasquantino, but those three weren’t enough to cover what were some abysmal offensive shortcomings.

On the pitching side, in 2024, the Royals first-choice rotation started 151 out of 162 games, an astounding number. It would’ve been crazy to expect that kind of consistency from the starting five. In 2025, their first-choice rotation started 116 games. While guys like Noah Cameron and, later, Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek filled in admirably, it was just too much to overcome when Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic combined to throw only 178 innings over 33 starts.

(Ragans, by the way, struck out eight batters on the day over 4.1 scoreless innings. In his three starts since returning from that strained rotator cuff, he’s thrown 13 innings with 22 strikeouts and four walks, allowing four runs. Yeah, the Royals missed that dude.)

These are kind of the high-level issues that were obvious even to the casual who checked in from time to time rather than sweating every inning of every game. There will be plenty of time to dissect the problems a little more in-depth over the winter.

Underachieving? Yes. Failure? I don’t think so.

While this season was disappointing, I remain optimistic. JJ Picollo has shown a knack for finding players who can provide some value, and while he’s hit paydirt on the pitching side, he’s going to need to land a big bat this winter. Carter Jensen looks like the real deal and, even though Jac Caglianone never got going, I remain a believer. The pitching pipeline remains an amazing asset to this organization. Matt Quatraro is the right guy to lead this club. There’s every reason to think that when we convene in this space in late March and talk about the upcoming season, I’ll write that the expectations are to take the division.

The Royals have one of the greatest players in the game in his prime years. They shouldn’t be missing a postseason, but it happens. But if it happens again? That would be simply unforgivable.

The pressure is on for 2026. The Royals cannot let another year of Bob slip away. Playoffs will be the goal and the only acceptable result.

My rooting interest in the playoffs, American League:

Mariners
Blue Jays
Red Sox
Tigers
Guardians

Yankees

Sure, the Mariners all but knocked the Royals out of the postseason picture when they took two of three in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago (or maybe it was the Royals losing three of four to Cleveland…or maybe it was when they dropped two of three to Philadelphia…September is already awfully hazy), but I kind of like this Seattle team. Plus, they’ve never been to a World Series. I’m always for a new team to get some shine.

The Red Sox are too high, but that’s because there are a couple of AL Central teams that have inexplicably made it to this point.

My rooting interest in the playoffs, National League:

Brewers
Padres
Reds
Cubs
Phillies
Dodgers

After the way Milwaukee crashed out in the Wild Card round last year, followed by the passing of Bob Uecker, they kind of feel like 2025’s team of destiny, you know? Kind of “always darkest before the dawn” vibes. And I’ll always side with the small markets.

I know this is the perfect opportunity for someone to note the Reds, after trading Jonathan India for Brady Singer last winter, are in the postseason…and the Royals are not. Shoot your shot!

Singer, by the way, took the loss on Sunday in the Reds finale. The Reds got in via a tiebreaker when the Mets crash-landed against the Marlins.

I do not have a vote for AL MVP, but if I did, this is how I think my ballot would look

Aaron Judge
Cal Raleigh
Bobby Witt Jr.
José Ramírez
Julio Rodriguez
Tarik Skubal
Maikel Garcia
Jeremy Peña
Byron Buxton
Wyatt Langford

This whole Judge vs Raleigh debate is silly. I wanted to find a way to vote for Raleigh. Desperately. There just isn’t an argument to be made. At all. Raleigh’s 2025 season goes down in the history books just like Witt’s 2024 season…an MVP-worthy campaign that came up short because one guy is a monster.

Watching Garcia all year, I wanted to get him into the top five, but again, I just couldn’t come up with an argument to justify that kind of lofty placement. Still, he’s going to get some mega down-ballot consideration, which is, honestly…huge.

How about AL Cy Young? Ok…here you go:

Tarik Skubal
Garrett Crochet
Hunter Brown
Max Fried
Kevin Gausman

This, like the AL MVP, should be unanimous. It’s Skubal all the way.

I wanted to find a way to get Bryan Woo on there, but Gausman gets my last spot. Barely.

And the AL Rookie of the Year:

Nick Kurtz
Colson Montgomery
Jacob Wilson
Roman Anthony
Noah Cameron

Again…this has to be unanimous. Seriously, that “finalist” reveal for these awards is going to be the least interesting shortlist ever. We already know the winners!

If Montgomery had played the whole year in the majors, he could’ve given Kurtz a run, though. Maybe.

Finally, I’d like to note this was my 20th year covering the Royals on this internet thing. When I started this enterprise, I figured I’d have some fun and jot a few things down from time to time. Then the Royals crashed right out of the gate in that 2005 season in what can only be described as a bundle of shambolic chaos. They fired Tony Peña. They gave 29 starts to Runelvys Hernández. They hit Terrence Long second. They lost 106 games.

The next year wasn’t much better. Allard Baird was fired. The Royals used the first overall pick in the draft on Luke Hochevar. Mark Redman was an All-Star. They lost 100 games.

To still be here doing this…after all of that…I can only diagnose myself with some sort of derangement.

Anyway, thank you again for reading, for sharing and for subscribing. I’d tell you that I have big plans for this offseason and that cool things are cooking, but I’m just winging it over here.