The Kansas City Royals have turned designated hitter into a long-running problem, and 2026 has pushed the issue to its lowest point yet.
By the numbers, this season is already the worst DH showing the organization has put together over the last 10 years. Kansas City is sitting with the worst OPS and worst wRC+ in baseball at the position, and the trend line points toward the worst DH season in franchise history. Even 2025, which came uncomfortably close to that mark, now looks like part of the same slide rather than a separate dip.
That’s the bigger story here: this isn’t about one bad season. It’s been a decade-long failure to get real production from a spot that is supposed to be built for it. Since 2017, the Royals rank 27th in the majors in DH production, and the table is ugly almost across the board.
Year by year, the numbers tell the same story with only one major exception:
2017: .681 OPS, .205 average, 29 homers, 84 sOPS+
2018: .742 OPS, .249 average, 28 homers, 91 sOPS+
2019: .955 OPS, .276 average, 44 homers, 141 sOPS+
2020: .683 OPS, .204 average, 9 homers, 88 sOPS+
2021: .744 OPS, .216 average, 35 homers, 97 sOPS+
2022: .613 OPS, .206 average, 16 homers, 73 sOPS+
2023: .715 OPS, .251 average, 19 homers, 90 sOPS+
2024: .640 OPS, .214 average, 21 homers, 73 sOPS+
2025: .615 OPS, .205 average, 15 homers, 64 sOPS+
2026: .584 OPS, .198 average, 14 homers, 56 sOPS+
One season leaps off the page, and it isn’t hard to spot. Jorge Soler’s 2019 run was the outlier that made the whole decade look different for a moment.
He hit 48 home runs, breaking Mike Moustakas’ previous single-season franchise record of 38 from two years earlier, and he led all of Major League Baseball in homers. He also drove in 117 runs, seventh-most in the league, and became the first Royals player ever to lead the majors in home runs.
It wasn’t a clean march to that finish, either. Through June 1, Soler was carrying a .290 on-base percentage, a wRC+ just under 100, and a strikeout rate of 30.3%. On April 21 against the Yankees, he struck out five times in one game, the dreaded platinum sombrero, and fans were openly questioning whether the Royals had lost the Wade Davis trade that sent him to Kansas City.
Then the season flipped. From July 1 on, Soler hit .301/.409/.649 over the final three months with a 170 wRC+, good for the sixth-best hitter in baseball during that stretch. He finished the year at .265/.354/.569 with a 136 wRC+.
Everything else in the sample looks far more familiar for Kansas City: below-average production, weak batting averages, and power that faded as the years went on. Outside of 2019, the Royals never got a single DH season with an OPS above .744, and the batting average at the position never once reached .260. The home run totals have also fallen off, with Kansas City DHs reaching 29 or more homers in three of the first four seasons in the sample, but never getting to 22 since 2022.
The 2021 group was the next-best version in the bunch at .744 OPS, but even that came in shy of league average, with a 97 sOPS+. Nine of the last 10 seasons have finished below league average at DH for Kansas City.
This year’s version has a very clear face: Salvador Perez.
Perez has taken on a much bigger share of the designated hitter workload in 2026 as the Royals try to manage his body and still get his bat into the lineup. By August 23, he had already played 58 games at DH, easily passing his previous high of 40, which he reached in both 2021 and 2022. That move has come alongside the rise of rookie catcher Carter Jensen as a real everyday option behind the plate.
The production has not followed. Perez entered a stretch this season hitting .195/.232/.328, with a wRC+ that ranked last among Royals hitters and sat 15 points behind the next-worst regular. His expected batting average and expected wOBA, which were both above the 80th percentile as recently as last year, dropped to around the 20th percentile in 2026.
So while 2026 is the latest low point, it isn’t some new problem the Royals suddenly stumbled into. It’s the end result of a pattern that’s been building since Soler’s one giant season.
Kansas City has cycled through stopgaps, aging veterans, converted corner outfielders, and part-time options at a position that should be a source of offense. Instead, it has been a hole, and one that has never really gone away.
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