Hope springs eternal, and never is that phrase more applicable in baseball than February and March. Players start showing up to Spring Training in great shape, and the excuses–legitimate or not–of the previous year are washed away. Injuries healed. Disappointments left behind. During Spring Training, you can easily convince yourself that just about everyone can be better when the season starts.
The unfortunate truth is that everyone can’t improve. Even when lots of players improve, some don’t. Some
do worse. Others get hurt. Take any two consecutive years and you’ll see that pattern. Like, look to the 2015 Royals championship season, a big step forward over 2014. Some players got better, but not all: Alcides Escobar was worse, Alex Gordon got hurt, Salvador Perez was worse, Jason Vargas got hurt, Omar Infante was worse, Greg Holland got hurt, Danny Duffy was worse.
So when looking ahead to this upcoming season, we have to take into account that it’s just not gonna go the way that we hope it will for certain players. Now, which ones? That’s the real question.
A month ago, my answer would have been clear that Maikel Garcia was the likeliest Royal hitter to regress. Garcia had a breakout 2025, turning in one of the most impressive Royals seasons in recent memory; he hit for average, he had great plate discipline, he hit for power, he fielded like a madman. He turned into an All-Star and arguably the best defensive third baseman in baseball, nabbing his first career Gold Glove.
But development is not linear, and Garcia has a lot of baseball history that suggests 2025 may be a sort of outlier. Prior to last year, he turned in 1,164 plate appearances where he hit .251/.301/.344–about 20% worse than league average overall. During that time, defensive stats suggested that he was a good-but-not-great third baseman. Garcia’s improvements in 2025 were real, but when you add almost 200 points of OPS in one season there is plenty of room to slide back a bit. Projection systems thought so, too, and they think he’ll be worth three and a half Wins Above Replacement or so as opposed to the five and a half he put up last year.
Now, I’m not so sure.
Maikel Garcia ripped through the World Baseball Classic like he was on a mission of baseball domination. In 28 plate appearances, Garcia hit .385, had three extra base hits, and stole a trio of bases without getting caught. He was big in big moments, as his above home run to bring Venezuela within a run of the imposing Japanese squad shows. And his single to left field against Italy gave his country a 3-2 lead.
At the end Venezuela stood alone, hoisting the World Baseball Classic trophy. And at the end, Garcia stood alone as MVP of the whole tournament.
Being a good baseball analyst means trusting the numbers and knowing the red flags, and the red flag of the nation of Small Sample Size waves clearly here. That’s because 28 plate appearances is basically nothing in the context of baseball. To trust those plate appearances more than years of recent history would simply be bad analysis.
At the same time, we don’t pit spreadsheets against each other to see who wins. Athletes are humans first, and humans are messy. We’re anxious. We doubt. We have confidence, we lack confidence, we seek confidence. We’re often equal parts brilliant and broken. And because athletes are complicated human beings, raw athleticism only goes so far. There’s a certain X-factor, a je ne sais quoi, a secret ingredient, that often drives athletic success.
And you know what? I think Maikel Garcia has it, whatever it is. He’s certainly got the tools while having plenty of room to grow–specifically in regard to barrel rate and bat speed. But that’s not just it. His performance in the World Baseball Classic is one intriguing point. His passion for the game is another, that his teammates rave about him as a player and person one more. And Garcia’s dedication to learning and mastering English is one of those things that reflects underlying and enduring positive traits, too.
I still wouldn’t be surprised if Garcia isn’t quite as good as his career year in 2025. But my intuition tells me that Garcia still has it in him to take another big step next year. If that happens, the Royals’ opponents need to watch out.
