The Kansas City Royals have seen their 2024 season come to an end. The killing blow was their 3-1 loss to the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the ALDS. Now begins their offseason.
First, though, it should be acknowledged that the season was a ringing success despite the fact that they didn’t wind up hoisting the trophy. No, those in Royals uniforms probably wouldn’t agree with this assessment, but we can take a more distant remove. The reality is that this is a team that lost 106 games in 2023. Undaunted, the front office spent aggressively by usual franchise standards – not always wisely, but aggressively – and as a partial consequence the Royals improved their win total by 30 full games in 2024. That’s a rare leap forward, and it landed them a wild-card berth (and a sweep over the favored Orioles in the Wild Card Series). It was the Royals’ first playoff appearance since 2015, and it’s reinvigorated one of the most enthusiastic fan bases in Major League Baseball.
Now comes the offseason and the 2025 season. The Royals have just about as good of a starting point as you can have when it comes to forward-looking matters, and that’s franchise shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. He’s coming off a stellar 2024 – one that will likely see him finish second to Aaron Judge of the Yankees in the AL MVP balloting – and at age 24 there’s plenty of that left to come. This past season, Witt put up a WAR of 9.4, which puts him in elite territory. In fact, he’s just the 11th player in the Integrated Era to record a single-season WAR of 9.0 or greater before age 25. Look at the list of those players, and you’ll find Witt is keeping impressive company. He’s under contract with the Royals through at least the 2030 season (and probably much longer, given the abundance of player and team options in his contract), and he figures to be an MVP-caliber performer all the while.
As for the rest of the Royals in 2025, they don’t face many significant departures. Among contributors this past season, just Michael Lorenzen, Paul DeJong, Garrett Hampson, and Will Smith are slated for free agency. Of those, perhaps only Lorenzen is worth engaging in talks. As well, right-hander Michael Wacha, who was a linchpin in the Royals’ rotation this year, has a $16 million player option for 2025 that the club no doubt hopes he exercises. The front of the Royals’ rotation, which to a significant degree drove the team’s success, returns, as Seth Lugo, Cole Ragans, and Brady Singer are all under contract or under team control for at least 2025.
On offense, there’s work to be done, at least outside of Witt. KC this past season ranked 13th in runs scored in MLB but a less impressive 20th in the advanced metric weighted runs created plus, or wRC+ (what’s this?). That disconnect is owing to the fact that the 2024 Royals enjoyed elevated production with runners in scoring position, and history teaches us that such spikes tend not to be sustainable from season to season. Stated another way, the Royals’ offense may need more work than you’d think just from eyeballing their run total. Third base, left field, center field, and DH were particular trouble spots. Royals who saw time at those positions/roles in 2024 combined to hit just .226/.281/.356. By comparison, the combined major-league average this season for third basemen, left fielders, center fielders, and DHs comes to a slash line of .242/.311/.402. In other words, the Royals were operating at a significant deficit at almost half their lineup spots.
There may be some internal help on the way that can help in some places, and there’s hope for further development with young/young-ish talents like Maikel Garcia and MJ Melendez. Some external help may be in order, though, and there’s some power to be found on the free-agent market — Anthony Santander and Teoscar Hernández, for instance. That, of course, depends upon ownership’s willingness to invest further in the on-field product. In order to contend again in 2025, though, some lineup help from outside the organization will probably be necessary. However that plays out, the Royals matter again, and that’s not something that seemed at all likely this time a year ago.