"We took a step back"

There was action at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday, just not on the field. Instead of batting practice and bullpen sessions ahead of what would’ve been a postseason game, Royals management gathered in the media room for their end of the year press conference.

With General Manager JJ Picollo and manager Matt Quatraro on the dias, they held a wide-ranging discussion of what went right for the Royals in 2025 and were also honest about what went wrong.

As far as information goes, nothing much was revealed that could be termed “breaking news.” It was more along the lines of what we all probably expected from an end of the year press conference. Still, though, there was plenty to unpack.

At the front of mind is the situation with the hitting coach. The Royals scored 4.02 runs per game in 2025, which ranked them 26th out of the 30 teams. Their on base percentage was .309, which ranked 22nd. The Royals collectively slugged .397, the 17th best rate in the league.

Mix all those rates and averages together and the Royals finished with an OPS+ of 96, meaning that their team offense was about four percent worse than the average major league team. That kind of continues the theme I touched on earlier this week…Not terrible, but not good enough.

The struggles were particularly acute early in the season as the Royals were scoring just 3.1 runs per game through the end of April.

Picollo was asked about hitting coach Alec Zumwalt straightaway:

We’ve got to make some decisions on the hitting side. What I will say is Alec Zunwalt is going to be our hitting coach.

How do we support Alec in a way that allows him to have the most success with the roster that we have? Those decisions haven’t been made yet and we still have to work through that. It might just be tweaking our staff.

…

We have a lot of belief in what Alec has done in the minor leagues and how he’s led the minor league department now in the major leagues. Guys have gotten better. You know there are guys that have improved. Mentioned the four guys (Bobby Witt Jr., Salvador Perez, Vinny Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia) and I don’t think we can ignore that.

Picollo did note in his opening statement that Witt, Perez, Garcia and Pasquantino had “exceptional” years and, sure, I can give him that. (My quibble would be on Perez, but at his age…yeah, I suppose we can qualify as “exceptional.”)

It’s difficult to look at those four as Zumwalt-specific success stories. Witt is a generational talent, although they have worked together for Witt’s entire time in the organization. Pasquantino finally achieved his optimal offensive production, so that is something. Perez saw his production drop in 2025, although his power was still present.

The main success story this year would be the breakout of Garcia. If you’re going to hang an “L” on Zumwalt for how. say, Jac Caglianone struggled in the major leagues, don’t you have to give him a “W” for Garcia?

Picollo was asked, specifically, what Zumwalt brings to the team as a hitting coach.

I mean, he’s a tireless worker, which as Q said, they all (the coaches) are tireless workers. His creativity, his game planning, his relationship-building abilities all really stand out.

And when you think about it, let’s just use Bobby and Maikel as examples…When they first set foot in this organization, Alec was our hitting coordinator. He’s grown with them throughout the last six, seven years. For some of those guys, he’s the only hitting coach that they’ve really known, have worked together.

So there’s a strong trust in what he does and what he brings. So part of being a good coach is building relationships. If you can’t build relationships, then you don’t have trust. So Alec, I know, has the trust of our hitters.

And he’s passionate….Game planning, swing mechanics, creativity, desire to win…all those things are there with Alec.

Look, we’ve been over this several times this season…I just cannot get hung up on Alec Zumwalt as an issue. I couldn’t tell you if he’s a good hitting coach, a great hitting coach or the worst hitting coach in the history of hitting coaches. What I do believe is that Picollo and Quatraro don’t have the kind of blind loyalty that was a hallmark of the Dayton Moore Era. The platitudes about passion and desire and all of that may sound familiar, but I truly believe that if Picollo and Quatraro didn’t think Zumwalt could get the maximum out of these hitters, he would not be here. I realize I veer close to being a shill for management, but I think that they deserve a little leeway with how the organization has turned around in what was a very short period of time.

In 2024, the Royals hit .282/.348/.446 with runners in scoring position and averaged 4.5 runs per game. In 2025, they hit .255/.319/.404 with RISP and, as noted above, only scored 4 runs per game. As Picollo pointed out, the offense overall this year was very close to the offense we saw in 2024.

Wild how close those two teams were in their production in each of the last two seasons. So if the difference in run production came down to a split like how the team hit with runners in scoring position, that just seems more to me like bad luck than a bad hitting coach.

As far as payroll goes, Picollo said not to expect a substantial increase in the amount the Royals are willing to spend.

But right now, if we’re going to operate just as we are, we’re in that 140-ish range, we’ve got to make that work. And if there’s something that we can capitalize on later in the offseason that makes us marginally better, then we’ll try to do it. But we’re pretty comfortable with where we are (with the budget), and from a front office perspective, it’s our responsibility to make that work.

Last season, the Royals had an Opening Day payroll of around $126 million. Their projected year-end payroll will come close to $132 million, according to Cot’s. It’s interesting that Picollo would throw out that “$140 million-ish” number, as it would seem there’s some flexibility built in. A little. As the GM noted, Royals CEO John Sherman has indicated a willingness to spend a little more if the opportunity is there and it makes sense. That’s how the Carlos Estévez acquisition unfolded last winter.

The Royals have committed close to $70 million for five players (Wacha, Lugo, Estévez, Witt and Ragans) for 2026. Perez has a team option for $13.5 million that will certainly be exercised (more on that in a moment). That $140-ish budget gets tight real fast.

Jonathan India, Kris Bubic, MJ Melendez, John Schreiber, Kyle Isbel, Sam Long, Vinnie Pasquantino, Michael Massey, Daniel Lynch IV, Angel Zerpa will be eligible for arbitration with Lucas Erceg and Maikel Garcia likely to earn that benefit as Super Two players. There are some non-tender candidates in that group and one or two guys who could sign a longer-term deal, but there should be some cash to add a veteran on a trade or to dabble in the free agent pool.

I’ll have some more about the payroll and budget and all the contracts they’ll need to be dishing out later this month.

Picollo said that the Royals have already started conversations with Perez and his representation about what they’re going to do for the 2026 season. The Royals hold a team option that they can exercise for $13.5 million. There’s also the possibility that they reach an agreement that stretches beyond the 2026 season. I imagine that would look like a one-year deal at around $15 million with another club option for the 2027 season. Something along the lines teams do with managers to avoid a lame duck sort of status that can be uncomfortable for everyone.

Rest assured, Perez will be back with the Royals in 2026. I would expect that to be one of the first pieces of business that’s resolved this winter.

The rest of the press conference was kind of your standard fare. The Royals are happy with their starting rotation depth. They like what veterans like Mike Yastrzemski and Adam Frazier brought to the team at the trade deadline. They were impressed with the poise of local rookies Noah Cameron and Carter Jensen. Caglianone has solved Triple-A and will need to figure out how to succeed at the major league level. They were proud of the way the team finished, even though they were disappointed they fell short of returning to the postseason.

Picollo stressed that consistency is the ultimate goal for this organization. I realize it’s only been two years where they’ve finished above .500, but it seems like they have that goal covered. The foundation seems stable and with the pitching depth they’re able to identify and accumlate, it seems as though a .500 record is the absolute minimum of expectations going forward. Quatraro elaborated about how they’ve built a winning culture. He’s not wrong on that.

Finally, I’ll wrap with a quote from Qutraro that I think accurately sums up the 2025 season.

I’m not a subscriber to talk about the injuries or the adversity. Every team deals with it, whether it’s health or underperformance. There’s all kinds of adversity. And I think that’s a very overused term.

This is a long season that, like I said, you have a million different things have to go your way to win the last game of the year. It didn’t happen for us. Some of that’s on our performance. Some of it’s on other factors that are out of your control. And there’s a tremendous amount of randomness to this game in how you acquire players, some things that you think you have locked up don’t go your way.

Sometimes you think you have a slam dunk decision made in a game that doesn’t go your way. Other times you might not have your high-division relievers available that night, and other guys step up and we win the game.

So there’s a lot of things that go into it, but overall I would say are we better? I think we’re better from our processes. We weren’t better from a wins and losses standpoint. So that’s what we’re judged on ultimately.

And so no, I would say we took a step back.

Quatraro and Picollo talked at lenght about processes in this press conference. It’s interesting that Quatraro feels they’ve improved the coaching, the scouting, the analytics…everything that goes into formulating a game plan. As Quatraro said, sometimes the best preparation goes out the window when the game goes sideways. And goodness, can the game go sideways.

The good news is, Quatraro and crew aren’t happy with just a better process. They want the results, and in 2025, those results weren’t there. They were good, but not good enough. They have to get better.

I believe they will.