The Royals’ season is done, and the winter to-do list is already long. At 69-93, they fell well short of the division chase they expected to be in, and one of the bigger storylines was Vinnie Pasquantino’s uneven year at first base.
Pasquantino’s first half was rough by his standards. He posted a wRC+ of 80 and an OPS of .653, then started to turn things around in June before a hamate injury knocked him out for about a month. When he came back, he looked closer to the version the Royals were counting on, only to land on the IL again with hand soreness.
Once he returned for good after missing two weeks, the finish was loud. Pasquantino closed with an OPS of .936 and a wRC+ of 157, and the difference in his bat was impossible to miss.
A lot of that change showed up in the way he attacked pitches. His swing rate on the year was 46.5%, which is pretty close to his usual level, but it climbed to 48.3% in the second half.
The bigger shift was in how often he went after strikes. His Z-swing% jumped to 72.1% in the second half from 66.1% overall, and that lined up with his already strong bat-to-ball skills.
His Z-contact% was 91.7% for the season and 93.6% after the break.
That combination helped him do more damage when he did swing. Pasquantino also made contact on 75.4% of his chase swings, so the late-season version of his profile wasn’t just more aggressive - it was more productive. He was getting the barrel on the ball more often and turning that into better contact.
The power numbers backed it up. In the second half, he posted a 15.0% barrel rate, a 46.0% hard-hit rate, and an average exit velocity of 92.0 mph. Even with that added pop, he kept a solid BB/K ratio of 0.78, going 18:23.
The tradeoff was a lower walk rate. It dropped to 9.7% in the second half from 11.0% in the first half. For Royals fans, that’s probably a fine price to pay if the rest of the package keeps looking like it did down the stretch.
The bigger concern is the pattern. Pasquantino has long had a reputation for slow starts, and the numbers support it.
In the first month of his career, he’s carried an OPS of .682 and a wRC+ of 86. By the time the All-Star break rolls around, he usually settles in around a wRC+ of 105-110.
Then he’s often at his best in the second half, where he’s posted a wRC+ of 140.
Early in the season, he tends to be more patient, with an 11.5% walk rate. That suggests timing is still coming along, and once he gets into rhythm, the production follows. The problem in 2026 was that the Royals didn’t have enough offense around him, so his slow start loomed even larger.
He took his share of blame, but the lineup as a whole was struggling, too. If the Royals are going to avoid another sluggish opening, Pasquantino has to be one of the players who sets the tone. With the mechanical adjustments and the more aggressive approach he showed late, that’s the version they need to show up in 2027 from the jump.
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Royals Fans Just Got A Fascinating New Prospect Test To Watch
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For Kansas City fans, the appeal is in how differently these two players arrive at the same stage. Walcott is trying to show hes past the interruption and ready to keep moving forward, while Gomez is being asked to handle a major jump in competition at an age when most players are still years away from that kind of test. It makes for a fascinating fall assignment, even if the real payoff may not come until later. [Read more 🡒]