Jac Caglianone is showing subtle signs of life at plate in second stint with Royals

After an unprecented amount of excitement for his initial call-up to the majors, it’s safe to say that Jac Caglianone has not quite lived up to the hype in the early stages of his career.

In his opening 161 plate appearances in 41 games before hitting the injured list in early July, Caglianone looked like a shell of the hitter he was during his meteoric rise to the majors. He was slashing just .147/.205/.280 with five home runs, 10 RBI and a 30 wRC+.

That being said, not every prospect is going to step into the majors and immediately hit the gorund running. With Caglianone, patience was always the emphasis when discussing his acclimation to the majors.

And now that he’s returned to the lineup, the results may still be underwhelming but there’s encouraging signs of life that gives the Royals a solid point to build off come 2026.

Slowly but surely Jac Caglianone is showing subtle signs of life at plate

Now, I’ll preface by saying Caglianone has not set the world ablaze by any means since arriving back with the Royals at the beginning of the month.

He’s still been a below average hitter, but a .172 AVG, .609 OPS and 80 wRC+ this month is still certainly a step up from what he was. And there’s multiple reasons as to why this is the case for the 22-year-old.

For starters, if you split his season in half, he may be striking out a touch more – with a 22.0% clip compared to a first-half 21.7% mark – but he’s walking a ton more. Before the All-Star break, Caglianone was only drawing walks at a 4.3% clip, but since then, he’s been walking 15.3% of the time.

Then, there’s the quality of contact. Using the same first and second half splits, Caglianone may not be pulling the ball a ton (38.4% down to 37.8%), but he’s not slapping to opposite field as much (21.2% down to 18.9%), instead making higher quality contact up the middle (40.4% up to 43.2%).

This is evident by the fact he’s not hitting the ball as softly anymore. While there’s only a 0.4% increase in his hard-hit rate half-to-half, he’s turned some of his soft contact (21.2% down to 16.2%) into a more competitive medium contact (41.4% up to 45.9%).

This means he’s also been keeping the ball on the ground less (50.5% down to 43.2%) and getting the ball in the air more, whether that be via the line drive (16.2% up to to 21.6%) or the fly ball (33.3% up to 35.1%), both of which are more conducive to competitive results.

It’s going to be a long process but it’s hard to deny that Caglianone is improving, and perhaps nights like he had in Sunday’s victory over the Phillies are sign of better things to come moving forward.

At the end of the day, Caglianone will be a critical part of the Royals future, so there’s no time to dwell in the past.

Instead, it’s time to start looking for the positives, which are slowly but surely showing.