Carter Jensen is off to a fast start

The Kansas City Royals hitting in 2025 is what failed the team this season. Part of the problem was the players who they had on the Opening Day roster that had atrocious seasons at the plate. M.J Melendez, Hunter Renfore and Michael Massey, all who were in the Opening Day lineup have been worth -2.6 fWAR over their 427 plate appearances this season.

The other part of the problem is that the Royals did not have ready reinforcements in the minor leagues. Nearly every hitter they called up this season to try and address their lineup issues ended up revealing why the Royals went with the players they did on Opening Day in the first place. Drew Waters had a moment, but it never looked sustainable, and he ended up with -.5fWAR over 219 plate appearances. John Rave and Nick Loftin have been similarly disappointing, and each is around 30% below league average at the plate. Jac Caglianone has been the most frustrating and worrying to watch; his -1.4 fWAR over 206 plate appearances makes him the least valuable player on the team this season and a cause for some worry heading into next season.

So while we are still in the land of extremely small sample sizes and will be until the end of the season, it’s been refreshing and encouraging to see Carter Jensen off to a nice start to his major league career. Through his first 31 plate appearances, Jensen has a 1.092 OPS and the quality of his contact on his Baseball Savant page shows that he’s earned his sparking hitting numbers. Since we are in the land of extremely small sample sizes, much of his production is from one excellent game, when he hit two home runs.

Both of his home runs are impressive pieces of hitting and worth revisiting. He shows impressive opposite field power on his first home run, driving an admittedly meaty pitch to hit to the left field corner:

The second home run came on a tougher pitch to hit, it had dropped out of the strike zone by the time it reached the plate, but the rookie catcher still went down and smoked the ball into the right field corner:

Both of his home runs came on swings that resulted in line drives that kept carrying, revealing impressive power at the plate and a good approach. In the spacious outfield of Kauffman Stadium, I’d rather have guys going for a line drive swing and ending up with plenty of doubles as well as some homers instead of three true outcome kind of approach.

Jensen’s approach at the plate has also been nice to see and hopefully a sign of things to come. He has six walks over his 31 plate appearances with only seven strikeouts. His chase rate is only 25%, which would be fourth best on the team this season if the catcher had enough plate appearances to qualify, behind Jonathan India, Maikel Garcia and Mike Yastrzemski. The Royals need more hitters who can work the count and hit for power, and so far Jensen has done both.

I did not expect the rookie to come out and hit well right off the jump. Jensen only turned 22 in July, and had a slow start to AA this season before turning it on later. It was reasonable to expect the southpaw to follow the path of all the other Royals hitters we’ve seen this season and struggle to make the leap between AAA and the majors. There is still enough time for a cold streak to make these numbers look pedestrian, but his demeanor when he’s at-bat so far and how that translates into quality plate discipline numbers has me optimistic that he’s really ready for a regular spot in the Royals lineup, both to finish out this season and as we look forward into next season.

Jensen’s late season success poses some interesting questions as we head into the offseason. Do the Royals believe in Jensen enough, both at the plate and behind it, to make him the primary catcher next season, or at least one with a 50/50 split with Salvador Perez? Jensen will have the platoon advantage more often than Perez and certainly will have the fresher legs. We have no idea what kind of role Perez is willing to accept either, which could complicate things.

In the scenario where Perez and Jensen are both getting time at catcher and at designated hitter, what does that do to the rest of the roster? That presumably would lock Caglianone into right field (assuming the Royals want to give him that job) and Vinnie Pasquantino into first base. Yastrzemski, who will be a free agent, looks redundant in this scenario, as does one of India and Massey.

I’m sure we will write plenty this offseason on what to do with all the players on the Royals roster and how to construct a team that makes sense. The early success of Carter Jensen makes that a more exciting discussion and hopefully means the Royals have found part of their solution to improving their offense next year already.