The Royals Are Still Waiting For The Isaac Collins They Saw In Milwaukee – Royals

For much of the season, Isaac Collins‘ performance has raised a difficult question.

How can a hitter who continues to control the strike zone, posts solid quality contact metrics, and owns some of the strongest plate-discipline indicators of his career produce so little offensively?

The answer does not appear to be a loss of talent or physical decline. Nor does it stem from the disappearance of the skills that fueled his breakout campaign with Milwaukee in 2025. Instead, the numbers point to something more subtle. Collins is still doing many things well, but a combination of passivity in the strike zone, increased swing-and-miss issues in key situations, and a less efficient contact profile has eroded his offensive value.

The disappointment is understandable. Kansas City acquired a player coming off a .263/.368/.411 season that was good for a 122 wRC+ and 2.6 WAR, a performance that established him as one of the Brewers’ most unexpected success stories. Since arriving in Kansas City, however, his production has fallen sharply, turning him into a clearly below-average offensive player.

 At first glance, that decline seems to support the idea that Collins has simply regressed after a season that exceeded his true talent level. A closer look at the underlying metrics, however, tells a more complicated story.

His walk rate has actually improved from 12.9% to 13.8%. His barrel rate has climbed from 4.9% to 7.9%. Hard-hit rate has remained virtually unchanged, slipping only from 38.9% to 37.8%, while his average exit velocity has held steady. Even his expected metrics paint a far less severe picture than the one reflected in his traditional slash line.

In other words, Collins does not look like a hitter who has suddenly lost the ability to impact the baseball. Several of the indicators that tend to predict future success remain relatively encouraging. The problem is that those strengths are being undermined by changes in the way he is constructing his plate appearances.

During his breakout season in Milwaukee, Collins found a valuable balance. His discipline allowed him to avoid chasing pitches outside the zone, but he was also aggressive enough to attack strikes he could handle. That combination helped him work favorable counts and produce quality contact.

The 2026 version looks different.

His chase rate has barely changed, a strong indication that his plate discipline remains intact. The difference lies within the strike zone itself. Collins is swinging at fewer strikes than he did a year ago and, more importantly, he is allowing significantly more pitches in the heart of the zone to pass without a swing.

 The significance of those numbers extends well beyond a simple discussion about aggressiveness.

Collins is not struggling because he is chasing more bad pitches. He is struggling because he is allowing too many good pitches to go by.

Every hittable strike he takes increases the likelihood of falling behind in the count. Once the pitcher gains the advantage, the entire dynamic of the plate appearance changes. More breaking balls appear, more offspeed pitches enter the mix, and the hitter is forced into a reactive approach rather than an attacking one.

That sequence helps explain another trend that repeatedly shows up in his numbers. While Collins continues to make respectable contact against fastballs, his swing-and-miss rates against breaking and offspeed pitches have become increasingly concerning. When he falls behind in the count, opposing pitchers gain more opportunities to exploit those vulnerabilities, and the rise in his strikeout rate is the natural consequence.

The damage, however, does not stop there.

Once the ball is put in play, Collins’ contact profile looks dramatically different from the one that fueled his success in Milwaukee. If there is a single statistic that best captures the difference between the two versions of Collins, it is probably the distribution of his batted balls.

 A decline of nearly eight percentage points in line-drive rate represents a major red flag.

For a hitter with Collins’ profile, line drives are the foundation of offensive success. His value has never been built around elite power. At his best, he generated hard contact on productive trajectories, producing hits consistently while maximizing his ability to reach base.

That profile has largely disappeared.

His fly-ball rate has jumped by more than sixteen percentage points compared to last season, while his line-drive rate has collapsed. The consequences have been immediate: fewer hits, fewer extra-base hits, and a substantial drop in BABIP.

What makes the situation particularly interesting is that it helps reconcile two seemingly contradictory realities. On one hand, Collins continues to post respectable contact metrics. On the other hand, his production keeps declining. Both can be true at the same time.

A hitter can still produce some loud contact and yet have a disappointing season if those opportunities become less frequent or if an increasing share of his batted balls turns into relatively harmless fly balls. That description fits Collins’ first few months in Kansas City remarkably well.

Another factor that has deepened the decline has been his performance against left-handed pitching.

 While he remains reasonably productive against right-handers thanks to his ability to get on base, he has been one of the least effective hitters in baseball against left-handed pitching. The gap is so dramatic that it has significantly reduced his margin for error and limited his overall impact as a switch-hitter in the lineup.

Even so, the most important conclusion is not that Collins has become a bad player.

He continues to draw walks at an excellent rate, maintains contact-quality metrics that closely resemble last season’s numbers, and still possesses many of the skills that fueled his breakout in Milwaukee. What has changed is not the quality of those tools, but the way he is using them.

In 2025, Collins forced pitchers to react to him. This season, far too often, the opposite has been true. By allowing more hittable strikes to pass, he has put himself in disadvantageous counts where breaking balls, swing-and-miss issues, and less productive contact begin to dictate the outcome of the plate appearance.

That is why the solution likely does not require a complete overhaul or a dramatic mechanical adjustment. The Royals do not need a different player. They need the version of Collins that attacked hittable strikes and turned selective aggression into offensive production.

Until that version returns, Kansas City will continue waiting for the hitter it believed it acquired over the winter.