The Royals need Vinnie Pasquantino to get off to a hot start

Slow starts can hide big seasons, but few were as dramatic in 2025 as Vinnie Pasquantino’s. Strip away April, and Pasquantino hit like a star, producing a 130 wRC+ the rest of the way. The problem, for both him and the Royals, is that this pattern has become familiar, and in a season where Kansas City can’t afford to dig an early offensive hole, the timing matters as much as the totals.

If you sort all qualified hitters from 2025 and look at who had the largest gap in wRC+ between their April 30th total and their year-end, Vinnie Pasquantino had the second-largest gap. Only Toronto’s Addison Barger had a worse relative start at the plate for everyday starters.

In fact, if you took that part of Pasquantino’s season after April, his wRC+ was a stellar 130! I’m sure he is aware of this, and I am also sure he is aware that this has been a theme of his career so far. It feels like every year Vinnie starts slowly and then turns it on. He hit a paltry 96 wRC+ through the end of April in 2024, and even his first 18 games in the majors in 2022 were bad until he started getting going. The 2023 season is the only one in which he has gotten off to a solid start, and that year was cut short in June when he had shoulder surgery. We have yet to see him have a full year where he has really put things together. In 2024, he came the closest, but the steadier production was offset by never having the highs of the other years. His best month was a 128 wRC+, well below every other year’s peak.

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I bring this up because the Royals cannot afford another slow offensive start. That puts even more importance on the core of Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, and now Maikel Garcia being who they are from the outset and helping take pressure off Jac Caglianone and Kyle Jensen in particular, as well as Jonathan India and Michael Massey, both of whom will be looking to bounce back. That does not mean Witt, Pasquantino, and Garcia will never slump—every hitter does—but getting this lineup moving early and avoiding the familiar feeling of “here we go again” would carry real psychological value as the Royals settle into a long season in which they are well positioned to challenge for the American League Central.

Last offseason, Vinnie worked on upping his swing speed, and early season issues were at least in part attributed to that. I am all for a player working on his game and trying to improve, so I hope he does not let last year dissuade him from working on new things this offseason. Overall, his 2025 bat tracking data showed an average bat speed that was 72.5 mph, only 0.8 mph above 2024, but the percent of swings greater than 75 (fast swings), went from 19.7 to 26.4. I am not sure if he figured out how to swing hard at the right pitches or in the right counts and then back it down when he needed to prioritize contact, but something got fixed after that rough start.

He also didn’t pull the ball more, increase his hard hit rate, or his average exit velocity, and his ground ball rate was only barely down. Yet the home run total jumped up anyway. He seems so knowledgeable about hitting when you listen to him discuss it, and I trust that he is going to continue being a solid bat in the middle of this lineup. I just hope he has a plan for how to get locked in by the end of spring training so he can hit the ground running.