If I rank primary second basemen with at least 200 PAs by fWAR in 2025, India comes in at 49. Behind Adam Frazier, ahead of Michael Massey. The unsigned Luis Rengifo – someone the Royals should seriously consider for a utility role, if they aren\u2019t – is ahead of him. But the Rangers don\u2019t appear to have a real primary second baseman after trading away Marcus Semien. FanGraphs has the Angels positionally behind the Royals here, too, but I believe in Christian Moore more than they do, I guess.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
To be clear, there\u2019s a lot of room for advancement here. If India can bounce back at all,<\/em> or if Michael Massey can supplant him and come back, the Royals could jump up this list in a hurry. I\u2019m just not sure I see it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Now that\u2019s more like it. I almost took Maikel Garcia all the way up to fourth, but I think Matt Chapman has one more really good year in him. Jose Ram\u00edrez is a future Hall of Famer and leads the way here. Junior Caminero and Bo Bichette are also ahead of Maikel, but I think if he can find another step, he could pass Bichette as well as Chapman pretty easily. The easiest path for finding that step is probably to run the bases as well as he did in 2024 while hitting like he did in 2025. That would get him up next to Caminero; I just don\u2019t see any way he can reach J-Ram\u2019s heights in 2026, though, unless the Guardian starts falling like a meteor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
It\u2019s Bobby Witt Jr. He has a bad season, and that lands him fourth in MVP voting. What are we even doing here? There are lots of good shortstops in baseball. Francisco Lindor, Gunnar Henderson, Geraldo Perdomo, Trea Turner, and Corey Seager all immediately spring to mind. But as far ahead as Ram\u00edrez is over Maikel, Bobby is that far ahead of everyone else at his position. ZiPS projects him for the fourth-most WAR in baseball. It would be silly to pretend he\u2019s anything but one of the top 10 best players in the sport at any position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I think people might be sleeping a little on Isaac Collins. I get that he\u2019s not a big-name guy, but he finished fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting last year. I\u2019m not sure who the clear-cut best left fielder in 2026 is. Steven Kwan gets the best projection on FanGraphs, but I have him down in the mud with Collins thanks to a lackluster 2025. If you threatened my life, I\u2019d probably offer up Roman Anthony. Riley Greene and Wyatt Langford both feel like pretty good picks, too, though. The others I have definitively ahead of Collins are Ian Happ, Cody Bellinger, Jackson Chourio, Tyler Soderstrom, Kyle Stowers, Randy Arozerena, and Heliot Ramos. Ram\u00f3n Laureano, Taylor Ward, Lars Nootbar, and Mike Yastrzemski round out the group of guys similar to Collins in my mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Twelfth seems way<\/em> too high for Kyle Isbel, but well, let\u2019s go through them all, I guess. First, the 11 clearly ahead of him: Julio Rodr\u00edguez is the best, followed by Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jackson Merril, Byron Buxton, Trent Grisham, Michael Harris II, Cedanne Rafaela, Evan Carter, Daulton Varsho, Parker Meadows, and Jo Adell. Here are the rest of the projected starting centerfielders: Andy Pages, Oneil Cruz, Colton Cowser, Jake Meyers, Harrison Bader, Jakob Marsee, Luis Robert Jr., Garrett Mitchell, Justin Crawford, Denzel Clarke, Brenton Doyle, Chase DeLauter*, Jacob Young, TJ Friedl, Victor Scott II, Cedric Mullins, Luisangel Acu\u00f1a, Alek Thomas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
*DeLauter is a top prospect, and maybe he should be a for-sure ahead of Isbel but\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
And yeah, sure, when I look at that group, I\u2019d assume that some number of them will be more valuable than Isbel. Let\u2019s say at least six of those guys are going to be better than Isbel. But if I compare them individually, I have a hard time saying, \u201cYes, this guy specifically will be more valuable than Isbel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
If I had to guess which ones would climb out of the much, I guess I\u2019d pick Pages, DeLauter, Bader, Robert, Cruz, and Cowser. But I\u2019m betting any money on any of them to do it, that\u2019s for sure. Still, if you wanted to say Isbel was more like eighteenth, I\u2019d probably agree. I\u2019m just not super sure about exactly who pushes him that low.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Jac Caglianone is getting a huge lift here from both his prospect status and his projections; it\u2019s certainly not from what he did in 2025. Though I\u2019ll continue to insist that if he\u2019d played a full season and hit 21 homers (which is what he would have had if you multiply his playing time and homers by three to get to full-season stats), even with those terrible rate stats, we\u2019d be a lot less scared about his potential. Aaron Judge is naturally the top dog here. Also clearly ahead of Jac are Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr., Kyle Tucker, Corbin Carroll, Wilyer Abreu, Seiya Suzuki, Matt Wallner, and Addison Barger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
If Jac actually lives up to his projections, he\u2019s going to pass several of those guys. Maybe even more than half of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
This time last year, I was advocating for Carter Jensen to get traded because I really didn\u2019t believe in his future potential. I was wrong. Now I\u2019m ready to project him as the eighth-best designated hitter in baseball. Though I hope he\u2019s catching more and designated hitting less. I hope I\u2019m right this time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Shohei Ohtani is, as usual, in a league of his own. Behind him, but ahead of Carter Jensen, I have Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Schwarber, Brent Rooker, Ivan Herrera, Jarren Duran, and Yandy D\u00edaz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Just because I\u2019m unhappy with how all this worked out, if I flipped Salvy and Jensen, I think Salvy would still rank between 8 and 10 in DH. George Springer and Christian Yelich might pass him. Carter would be ahead of Teel, Baldwin, Dingler, Alvarez, and Contreras at least. That would put him at seventh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Taking into account the caveats I laid out at the start, this all still makes me feel better about the Royals\u2019 lineup than when I started. Some of them will not end the season as high as they ranked here, but compare it to last year. Catcher might have gone up a few slots, second would have gone up a bunch (and been wrong, but that\u2019s how it goes.) Shortstop, center, and first would have remained roughly the same. But third would have been much lower. Designated hitter and both corner outfield spots would have been near the bottom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
We\u2019ve spent all offseason lamenting that the Royals didn\u2019t make a big move to improve the outfield or second base, but even the middling moves they\u2019ve made should lead to drastic improvements from awful to mediocre. The rotation is very similar to last season but with more depth, and the bullpen should also be improved. Until July 31, there\u2019s always more opportunity to improve the roster. But even until that happens, the Royals should be pretty fun to watch this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\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.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Players are beginning to report to Spring Training, and while there is still time for big moves – as I write this, the Red Sox just traded away a top pitching prospect for a shiny new starting third-bagger – the look of teams is really beginning to shake out in a way that lets us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2277135,"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":[378200,242317,378198,378199],"class_list":["post-2277134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-nonsense","tag-hok-talk","tag-royals-humor","tag-satire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Where-do-Royals-position-players-rank-across-MLB.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277134","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=2277134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2277136,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277134\/revisions\/2277136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}