{"id":2268883,"date":"2026-02-06T00:26:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T00:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2268883"},"modified":"2026-02-06T00:26:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T00:26:16","slug":"royals-breakout-star-primed-for-another-dominant-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-breakout-star-primed-for-another-dominant-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Breakout Star Primed for Another Dominant Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Kansas City Royals have a very talented up and coming roster centered around superstar Bobby Witt Jr. and a dominant pitching staff.<\/p>\n

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The Royals need to take a big step forward this season if they want to get back to the postseason in 2026. They have quite a bit of talent on the roster outside of Witt, too. Playing alongside Witt has caused the rest of the league to overlook Kansas City’s other stars.<\/p>\n

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If you like our content,\u00a0<\/em>choose Sports Illustrated as a preferred source on Google.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Just Baseball’s Eric Treuden recently listed Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia as the seventh best third baseman in baseball<\/a> and shared some high praise for the breakout star.<\/p>\n

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Maikel Garcia is primed for another dominant season<\/h2>\n

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Sep 24, 2025; Anaheim, California, USA; Kansas City Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia (11) makes a play in the eighth inning against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

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“Maikel Garcia\u00a0had one heck of a breakout in 2025, setting new career-highs in basically every single category you can think of outside of stolen bases,” Treuden wrote. “The 25-year-old earned a long-term deal with the Royals in December after making the All-Star Game, earning a Gold Glove, and finishing 14th in AL MVP voting. <\/p>\n

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“Garcia is a threat to leave the yard anywhere between 15 and 20 times a year, steal 20-30 bases a year, and play some of the best defensive third base we\u2019ll see around the league. This is a player who has the potential to shoot up these rankings come this time next year, but it\u2019ll be immensely helpful for him to repeat his 2025 performance in \u201926, that way we\u2019ll have more than just one year of sample size to go off of.”<\/p>\n

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Garcia is one of the more underrated infielders in the league because he wasn’t a dominant player until last season. But Garcia was so impressive last season that he will likely be well known by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

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The young infielder posted an .800 OPS with 39 doubles for the Royals, but his best trait is his defense. He brought home the Gold Glove award in the American League playing alongside Witt. This duo forms the best defensive pair in the league.<\/p>\n

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Garcia is primed for another big step forward this year. He could see his OPS climb higher into the .800s while his defense stays at the top of the league.<\/p>\n

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More MLB: <\/strong><\/em>Angels Lose 10-Year Veteran Silver Slugger to Royals in Free Agency<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.si.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Kansas City Royals have a very talented up and coming roster centered around superstar Bobby Witt Jr. and a dominant pitching staff. The Royals need to take a big step forward this season if they want to get back to the postseason in 2026. They have quite a bit of talent on the roster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2268885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2268883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Royals-Breakout-Star-Primed-for-Another-Dominant-Season.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2268887,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268883\/revisions\/2268887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2268885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}