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16. Kansas City Royals (83-79, third in AL Central, 699 runs scored, 671 runs allowed).
At some point in the winter, I said the Royals would win the 2026 AL Central. Then they stopped doing anything and the Tigers signed Framber Valdez and here we are, with another Royals team that feels like it needed one more big move to get over the line.
Even at that, this is going to be a fun group. In Bobby Witt Jr., Cole Ragans, Maikel Garcia, Jac Caglianone, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Carter Jensen, the Royals have a championship-caliber core of six guys 28 and under that few teams can match. Ragans was someone I hyped up last year only to see him crushed by batted-ball luck and sidelined by groin and shoulder problems. Caglianone is the apple of my eye this year, someone I expect to hit 35 bombs and get some downballot MVP votes. Oh, yeah, there’s also a reasonable candidate for best player in baseball in BWJ.
I just wish there was more in the next group. Salvador Perez is 36 and not that impressive as a DH. Kyle Isbel, Jonathan India, Isaac Collins are one-way players -- my skepticism of Collins’s 2026 season stands -- and there’s a big dropoff from Ragans to the rest of the rotation. The team’s cash payroll is up, but only to where it was in 2017, about $143 million, and the team is one market-value star behind the Tigers in the projections. The Tigers went out and got Valdez, the Royals got Lane Thomas, and that’s the difference between the two teams now.
It will be interesting to see how Kauffman Stadium plays with the fences pulled in. We’re a decade removed from the conversation about how the Royals reinvented baseball with contact and speed and rejecting home runs. Maybe I’m the only one who remembers it. Today, it’s amusing to me to see the Royals join many, many other teams over the last 20 years in making their ballpark more homer-friendly. JJ Picollo told MLB’s Anne Rogers, “Ultimately, we concluded that we would be a better team offensively. With our current pitching staff, the changes in the dimensions wouldn’t impact [pitching] negatively as much as it impacts our offense positively.” That’s a big bet on Seth Lugo’s ability to keep the ball in a smaller yard.
Upside: It’s way up there. Of all the teams in this muddled middle, the Royals are the one I could see putting the pedal down and running away with its division, call it 95-67.
Downside: The Royals have more pitching depth than they had in recent seasons, with righty Luinder Avila among the live arms who could step up later this year. I think that depth protects them from falling too far, so 80-82 is the floor.
Modest Proposal: Be aggressive in the trade market. The Royals are one left-handed hitting outfielder short, and I don’t mean Adam Frazier. The Red Sox still have a logjam; go get Jarren Duran. See if the Twins will move Matt Wallner. Monitor Lars Nootbaar’s return from heel surgery and grab him once healthy. Isaac Collins and Kyle Isbel aren’t going to get it done.
