After a two-game series sweep of the Baltimore Orioles, the Kansas City Royals have advanced to the ALDS to face the New York Yankees. This is their first postseason matchup since 1980, which marked the end of an intense and underrated rivalry in the late 70s and early 80s. These teams met in the ALCS four times from 1976-1980, with New York coming out on top thrice and the Royals finally vanquishing their Bronx demons in 1980. It sent the Yankees into the rare ringless decade, and the Yankees are currently in their longest title drought since then.
The Yankees are hoping to break a four-game playoff losing streak while the Royals want to make it five-straight playoff series wins as these two squads bring a new flavor to a classic rivalry.
Breaking Down an Old-School Royals’ Offense
HITTERS TO KEEP AN EYE ON:
Bobby Witt Jr.: .332/.389/.588| 168 wRC+ | 32 HR | 10.4 fWAR | 14.3% Barrel%4
Bobby Witt Jr. is one of the best players in the sport. There’s no other way to talk about him than by putting him in the same breath as the Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani class of players. Since 2023, the former first-round pick has the most WAR for a position player in baseball (16.2) and a 141 wRC+. His power-speed combination makes him a threat when you go after him and a threat if you make the short-sighted decision to walk him. You cannot stop him from beating you; all you can hope is that he does his damage with no one already on base.
Salvador Perez: .271/.330/.456 | 115 wRC+ | 26 HR | 3.2 fWAR | 12.2% Barrel%
The last player left from the 2015 Kansas City Royals, Salvador Perez, abused the Yankees’ pitching staff in their last matchup and had excellent numbers against them this season. Across seven games, he posted a 1.107 OPS with nine hits, six walks, and just three at-bats. Carlos Rodon specifically should pitch carefully to him, as he has a tendency to chase but will absolutely punish anything in-zone from left-handed pitchers.
Vinnie Pasquantino: .262/.315/.446 | 108 wRC+ | 19 HR | 1.5 fWAR | 7.1% Barrel%
After missing the final month of the season with an injury, Vinnie Pasquantino is back and has taken some encouraging hacks in his playoff debut. While he hasn’t repeated the success he had in his rookie season, Pasquantino has a swing that is built for the Bronx and should not be taken lightly. He hit 19 home runs this year; he would have had 31 home runs had he played all of his games at Yankee Stadium. The lefty-swinging first baseman will look at that short porch in right field the way I look at a plate of mofongo.
GAME PLANNING AGAINST THE ROYALS OFFENSE:
This is an aggressive offense that can ambush a pitcher with immediate contact, but they lack some of the core skills of a modern offense. Kansas City has a very old-school offense, they have their big power bats and surround them with scrappy hitters who don’t have much power and play great defense. What’s most surprising about the Royals is that they are sixth in average bat speed as a team, meaning they swing hard and still have excellent contact rates, an incredible quality that comes with a massive flaw.
READ MORE: Yankees select their starting first baseman for the ALDS
An aggressive offense that swings early in counts leaves itself very susceptible to breaking pitches and offspeed pitches, as it only holds an above-average wOBA against right-handed sweepers and left-handed splitters. All of these serve as ways to pick up swings and misses against an offense that otherwise doesn’t strike out much, so while the approach shouldn’t be just to abandon the fastball, it should be to mix in secondaries heavily.
The Yankees have the third-best Whiff Rate (34.2%) and ninth-lowest wOBA allowed (.268) on their non-fastballs, and we’ve seen their reliance on secondary pitches increase by the month.
I wouldn’t be the only one to notice this either; the league threw more non-fastballs to the Royals in September than they had in any other month this season, and KC posted a league-worst 61 wRC+ and struck out 24.4% of the time as well. It’s possible that they just hit a skid, but it’s also possible that they have a serious issue laying off of breaking pitches that the Yankees should expose.
As for how the Yankees’ starters match up against the Royals, we know that both Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon will pitch at home for Games 1 and 2. The reigning AL Cy Young Winner has three pitches that profile well against the Royals, as his curveball, cutter, and slider are all pitches that KC has struggled to do much with all year, and he’s shown an ability to steal strikes and rack up whiffs with his four-seamer as he’s become more mature on the mound.
Carlos Rodon may have the best advantage between the two, as the Royals posted an 84 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers this season. They’re not very good against Southpaws, and this could explain why Rodon was so effective in his two starts against them compared to his ugly outing at the end of the 2023 season. As for who I would start in Game 3, Clarke Schmidt would profile beautifully for a matchup like the Royals.
His sweepers and curveballs should be great weapons against the Royals’ slew of chase-happy hitters, but the main pitch here is the cutter. Kansas City had the eighth-lowest wOBA against cutters this year with the sixth-lowest Run-Value (-10), as most of their fastball success comes against four-seamers and sinkers. Clarke Schmidt had the third-lowest usage rate those two fastballs combined among starters (min. 80 IP) and has the fourth-highest cutter usage, its a pretty strong matchup advantage.
The Yankees should ensure they have their best defensive alignments out as many times as possible, so I expect to see a good amount of Alex Verdugo in left field. Speaking of lineups, the Yankees will have a tough nut to crack with that Royals’ pitching staff.
How Can the Yankees Overcome the Royals’ Pitching Staff?
POSSIBLE ALDS STARTERS:
Cole Ragans: 3.14 ERA | 3.27 xERA | 29.3% K% | 8.8% BB% | 0.72 HR/9 | 4.9 fWAR
Cole Ragans has one of the best fastball-changeup combinations in the league as only Cade Smith (CLE) and Tarik Skubal (DET) had better Run Values on those two pitches combined. His ability to attack up and down the zone makes him a nightmare for right-handed hitters, but it does leave him vulnerable to left-handed ones. They had a .341 OBP and .320 wOBA against him this season, as his strikeout rate dropped to just 20.2% in those matchups. That helps the Yankees, who have various left-handed bats in their lineup and have struggled against LHPs this season.
Seth Lugo: 3.14 ERA | 3.27 xERA | 29.3% K% | 8.8% BB% | 0.72 HR/9 | 4.9 fWAR
Seth Lugo quietly finished in the top 10 in fWAR (4.7) thanks to his nine different pitches, sporting multiple fastballs, sliders, and changeups alongside a looping curveball as well. He has all movement profiles covered, and he dominated the Yankees in his most recent start against them this past September. Since he pitched in Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Round, it’s unlikely that he’s able to start more than one game in this series, which is a potential blessing for the Bronx Bombers.
Michael Wacha: 3.14 ERA | 3.27 xERA | 29.3% K% | 8.8% BB% | 0.72 HR/9 | 4.9 fWAR
Another noted Yankee-killer, Michael Wacha, is slated to start Game 1 and potentially Game 4 if it gets to that. The right-hander has allowed five total runs across 20 innings of work against the Yankees in his last three starts, relying on his excellent changeup to miss bats and his other pitches to either set up his nasty offspeed pitch or generate harmless contact in the air. The one thing the Yankees may have going here is that they see a ton of pitches, and Wacha’s wOBA against batters 2nd and 3rd time through the order sits at .331, the same mark as Yandy Diaz and Alex Bregman in 2024.
Brady Singer: 3.14 ERA | 3.27 xERA | 29.3% K% | 8.8% BB% | 0.72 HR/9 | 4.9 fWAR
Brady Singer had a strong 2024 season, posting a 3.71 ERA across 32 starts and looking as good as he did in his breakout 2022 campaign, but there are a couple of key flaws here. The groundballs are there, but teams absolutely torch Singer on contact, especially from the left-handed side. The average slash line of a left-handed batter against Brady Singer in 2024 was an unreal .291/.367/.488. Let’s just say there was a reason the Yankees had 12 hits, and 10 runs scored in 10.2 innings against Singer in 2024.
ROYALS’ PITCHING SURGE:
Kansas City has a dangerous pitching staff that has only gotten better as they’ve shortened the bullpen for the postseason, creating a tough matchup for the Yankees. They’ll need Aaron Judge and Juan Soto to be on their A-game because the Royals’ have a ton of arms (especially from the left-handed side) who can come out of the bullpen and miss enough bats to get outs at a high level.
Their bullpen has consistently been viewed as a weak spot, but every single reliever on their roster with a negative fWAR has either been placed on the Injured List or DFA’d. That bullpen has Lucas Erceg, John Schreiber, Kris Bubic, Sam Long, and Daniel Lynch IV, who were all quality arms this year. What’s weird is that despite their success with some of the dead weight off the roster, they still rely more on called strikes than whiffs to rack up strikeouts.
It’s not as if they get hit particularly hard, boasting the sixth-lowest Barrel Rate% allowed (7.3%) and the third-lowest HR/9 (0.86) when you filter out players not on the active roster. I expect the Yankees’ offense to look less-than-stellar in this matchup as these two teams scratch and claw to get runs across the board, but the Bronx Bombers do have a way to exploit this team’s roster.
The Royals’ active roster still averages around 94 MPH on their fastballs, putting them 20th among 30 MLB teams, and there is no team in baseball better against fastballs at or below 94 MPH than the Yankees.
Among displayed metrics, they only finished lower than first in Batter Run Value, where they were fourth. If you don’t bring your best heater, the Yankees are going to crush it, and the Royals rank in the bottom 10 in both four-seam and sinker Stuff+. There’s a reason why they had an ERA north of 5.00 against the Bronx Bombers this season, and while regular season results in head-to-head matchups can be very flukey, the data does back up that there could be an advantage for the Yankees here.
There’s not a way for me to argue that Kansas City won’t pitch well in this series, given just how much talent they have on that side of the ball, but the Yankees have the offense to get enough runs across the plate. No matter how you slice it, the Royals have an excellent pitching staff, and they are far from a soft landing, I expect the Royals and Yankees to play a close series with plenty of momentum shifts.