The Kansas Metropolis Royals are my darkish horse group for 2026. They managed not solely to make the playoffs in 2024 but in addition to win a spherical regardless of not having something resembling a playoff-quality offense, after which went a good 82-80 in 2025 even after dropping ace Cole Ragans to a rotator cuff pressure and watching no. 2 starter Seth Lugo begin to endure the consequences of age.
Heading into 2026, the Royals have a deep pitching employees and extra good place gamers than they’ve had at one time in no less than 10 years. Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr. are baseball’s finest left-side-of-the-infield duo, and Vinnie Pasquantino is fairly good too. If not for the enormous sucking maw at second base, the Royals infield could be among the many finest within the majors.
Nonetheless, they may, as ever, use one other thumper. Witt is the group’s solely really transformative offensive participant, and whereas Kansas Metropolis has bolstered the lineup with the addition of Isaac Collins, it had solely 4 gamers final season with double-digit house runs. That’s the bottom complete in baseball; 27 groups had no less than six such gamers, 16 had eight, and 4 had 10.
Looks as if a group that might actually use a big Floridian with 80-grade energy.
The issue is, the Royals have one: Jac Caglianone. They made a considerable effort to get him, spending the sixth total choose and lavishing the fifth-largest bonus within the class on the previous Florida Gator. This regardless of there being no scarcity of gifted gamers left on the board. The subsequent three gamers picked had been JJ Wetherholt, who’d been within the dialog to go 1-1, Christian Moore, who’s already established himself because the Angels’ beginning second baseman, and Konnor Griffin, presently the no. 1 prospect in baseball.
I might’ve taken Caglianone on the time, too, as a result of the ability was too distinctive to disregard. Caglianone hit 68 homers in 137 video games throughout his ultimate two collegiate seasons, and in his draft yr he hit .419/.544/.875 with greater than twice as many walks as strikeouts. And Caglianone did all this whereas moonlighting as a beginning pitcher; as a sophomore he’d sandwiched between Brandon Sproat and Hurston Waldrep in a weekend rotation that took Florida to the Faculty World Collection ultimate in opposition to Paul Skenes and LSU.
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Caglianone wasn’t within the minors lengthy, as a result of he tore via the competitors like bread knife via an overhydrated focaccia. In his first full skilled season, he took half in 66 minor league video games, all at Double-A and Triple-A, and hit a mixed .337/.408/.617 with 20 house runs. Faculty baseball is a bonkers offensive atmosphere proper now, and loads of the pitchers Caglianone cooked at the moment are automotive salesmen or regulation college students. However switching to a wooden bat and going through adults didn’t sluggish him down a lot.
Now, at no level would I’ve accused Caglianone of being a sublime or refined participant. The premise right here is easy: This 250-pound man, this three-technique defensive lineman in stirrup socks, can swing a baseball bat about as exhausting as anybody on the planet. Right here’s his bat velocity from 2025, charted in opposition to Aaron Choose’s:
The transition from even the excessive minors to the majors will be bumpy. It could not have stunned me within the slightest had Caglianone hit within the low .200s over 60 video games with 15 house runs however one million strikeouts. However even in essentially the most pessimistic corners of my creativeness I by no means would have predicted what really occurred.
Caglianone hit .157/.237/.295 in 62 video games and 232 plate appearances. Among the many 348 place gamers with no less than 200 plate appearances final yr, he was 344th in wRC+ (at 46) and 347th in WAR (-1.6).
On a per-plate-appearance foundation, the distinction in WAR between Caglianone and Kyle Isbel (who’s, pretty or not, my psychological picture for the type of filler the Royals want to enhance on) was far larger than the hole between Isbel and Witt. WAR in a small pattern will be deceptive, and so forth and so forth, yadda yadda, however jeez.
Some of the urgent questions for the Royals, for each the brief and medium time period, is whether or not this undeniably horrible rookie season will or ought to dampen their dedication to their one-time prime hitting prospect.
I’ll begin with two items of excellent information for Caglianone. First, that WAR complete is as unhealthy as it’s largely for causes that must do together with his shortcomings as a participant however are outdoors of his management. Caglianone, a primary baseman for all of his school profession and most of his transient time within the minors, performed proper area in his first huge league call-up.
As you’d count on for a man who was a prime pitching prospect till not too long ago, Caglianone has a terrific throwing arm from proper, however even for a man his measurement, he’s neither nimble nor fast. These bodily limitations, mixed together with his inexperience on the place, led to his making a gift of seven runs of defensive worth in simply over 400 innings.
You’d must be loopy to suppose it’s a good suggestion to maintain him there, and my first inclination could be to point out up at Matt Quatraro’s home in the midst of the night time just like the ghost of Jacob Marley and yell at him till he guarantees to cover Caglianone’s outfielder’s mitt.
Sadly, the Royals are locked into Pasquantino at first, and prime catching prospect Carter Jensen was so spectacular in his personal rookie cameo that he’s bought a hand on the DH spot. Jensen can’t transfer to catcher full-time till franchise legend Salvador Perez, himself the recipient of a latest two-year extension, retires. The results of this logjam: Caglianone made 51 begins in proper area as a rookie, however simply seven at DH and just one at first.
I’m not going to knock Caglianone for defensive numbers which can be actually his GM’s fault. Nonetheless, a 46 wRC+ is unacceptable for a backup catcher, not to mention a would-be cleanup hitter.
Once more, there’s proof that Caglianone won’t have been that unhealthy. His BABIP in 2025 was .172, which was the worst within the league (minimal 200 plate appearances) by greater than 30 factors. He additionally underproduced his xwOBA by 82 factors. Amongst that very same group of hitters, this was additionally worst within the league by an enormous margin: 18 factors.
Opposite to my fears, Caglianone struck out 22.4% of the time and whiffed on 26.8% of this complete swings, each of that are worse than common total however nicely inside the vary of the suitable for a hitter together with his energy. And the ability is there; Caglianone was within the prime 10 (minimal 200 swings) for each common bat velocity and quick swing price, and twelfth (minimal 200 PA) in EV90.
I additionally needed to examine Caglianone’s main league Z-Contact%.
It is a first rate proxy for the way typically a hitter makes contact when he will get his pitch. The main league common final yr was 85.4%, however a number of the finest energy hitters in baseball — Choose, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani — stay within the excessive 70s with none hassle.
After that, there’s a cliff, and a Z-Contact% within the low-to-mid 70s can vary from a faint long-term concern (Nick Kurtz) to a warning signal of imminent decline (Rafael Devers) to a pink flag (Munetaka Murakami) to no matter shade flag is worse than pink (Christopher Morel). However that’s effective too; Caglianone made contact on 89.3% of pitches within the zone, which was really barely higher than what he did in Triple-A.
Nevertheless it wasn’t all unhealthy luck. Caglianone’s xwOBA in 2025 was .321, which is OK however not nice: a hundred and fifty fifth out of 348 gamers with the 200-plate look minimal. That was tied with Alex Name and Carson Kelly, amongst just a few different notable names: Trea Turner and Pete Crow-Armstrong had a .321 xwOBA and completed within the prime 15 in place participant WAR, although each of these guys play up-the-middle positions and stole 30-plus bases. To ensure that Caglianone to be a star, he has to hit extra.
Now we’re beginning to run into stuff that’s Caglianone’s fault. Somebody who hits the ball as exhausting as he does must be hitting it within the air. A minimum of, if he needs to attain runs; hitting the ball down is simply effective in case your aim is to torment the groundskeepers by pockmarking the infield with divots. Caglianone hit 1.46 grounders for each fly ball in 2025, and his minor league numbers had been related.
By now you’re in all probability getting an itching feeling within the base of your cranium, as a result of we spent a lot of the early 2020s complaining about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doing the identical factor. Vladito repeatedly overcomes his ground-and-pound propensity by hitting numerous line drives as nicely. In 2025, he was 102nd out of 348 in line drive price; Caglianone was 325th. In case you mix line drives and fly balls right into a single balls-in-air metric, Caglianone was 322nd.
The Statcast-derived anticipated stats take note of launch angle and exit velo, however not batted ball path. Accounting for these numbers does Caglianone no favors. I did the maths on this a pair years in the past in an article about Ryan Mountcastle, however I’ll give a short abstract right here: The most efficient batted balls are pull-side fly balls and line drives in any path. Heart area fly balls and opposite-field grounders are about impartial, whereas pull-side and heart area grounders, together with opposite-field fly balls, are virtually computerized outs.
In 2025, 24.7% of Caglianone’s batted balls had been pull-side grounders (i.e. the zone of demise), the Thirtieth-highest price in baseball. Solely 15.8% of his batted balls had been within the air and to the pull facet (i.e., the place low-cost house runs come from). The discrepancy between his anticipated and actual stats was so hilariously huge, a few of it should’ve been unhealthy luck. However not all of it.
Caglianone was so terrible in his first style of main league motion — and so unbelievably dominant at each step earlier than then — that I wouldn’t ask him to make dramatic adjustments to his swing or method based mostly on a 3rd of a season. The batted ball numbers being what they had been, I’d give him some rope and see how a lot of the ugliness of final yr off-gasses by itself.
But when that doesn’t occur, the Royals will nonetheless be no less than one huge bat away from with the ability to make a run. Whether or not Caglianone can put his rookie yr behind him — and to what extent — may find yourself swinging the AL Central race.