SURPRISE, Ariz. – Spring Training exists for pitchers to build up workloads and hitters to get their timing back. It’s a time for teams to harp on the fundamentals of good baseball. It’s preseason prep.
It’s also the perfect time to set the tone for how a team wants its season to go. Six weeks of Arizona sunshine feels long, until you leave and are staring down the 162-game schedule. But throughout the grind of a season are reminders of the messaging from spring.
The first full-squad spring workout is when it begins. On Monday, the Royals held their first all-team meeting, an annual tradition when different parts of the organization speak to the clubhouse.
“My message is pretty simple,” president of baseball operations and general manager J.J. Picollo said. “Go out and compete, be aggressive, be relentless and give us effort. We’ve got a great fan base, we’ve got tremendous support from ownership. There’s no reason why we can’t be the last team standing. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Winning is very clearly the goal of this team in 2026. Following their 2024 postseason run into the American League Division Series, the Royals finished third in the AL Central at 82-80 and five games out of a playoff spot in ‘25.
Players describe the feeling at the end of last year differently, but whether it was bitterness or disappointment or failure, no one wants a repeat.
“We fully expect to be a playoff team and make a run at it and be the last team standing,” starter Michael Wacha said. “We feel like we’ve got the guys in this clubhouse to be able to do that. It starts today with people buying into what the culture is here in Kansas City.”
There’s lots of time to dissect the roster and to see whether the Royals really are an improved team in ‘26. What can’t be argued is that there is talent in the clubhouse, and there’s depth.
There’s also leadership. And a culture established by those club leaders is emerging.
On the clubhouse TVs Monday morning was a series of core beliefs that players, staff and front office put together in an effort to define the identity of the 2026 Royals: Relentless. One pitch at a time. Your best all the time. Accountable to yourself and others. Love the process and the game. Selfless.
Take the first letter of every tenet, and it spells out ROYALS.
It’s what they want each person who walks into the clubhouse to understand about what it means to be a Royal.
“We’ve always kind of talked about it, but we’ve never really had our own kind of philosophy,” shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said. “We just believe if everyone abides by that and comes together to do that, then I think we have the right team, players, staff, to go a long way.”
Instead of an explanation from the front office or staff, this year it was a group of players delivering the message – something they’ve wanted to do for a few years now, Witt said.
“The 2014-15 teams, they had an identity,” Witt said. “What’s our identity? What’s it going to be? We can do this because I think the team we have is special. Everyone believes it, and it’s going to go a long way.”
Witt, Wacha, Vinnie Pasquantino, Seth Lugo and Carlos Estévez each said a few words during the meeting, something each wanted to do.
“When it’s one of your peers, teammates, expressing themselves on how the clubhouse should be, and what we expect out of everybody, I think it can hit in a different way,” Wacha said. “That’s what we were thinking. Just get a few players up there to talk to your teammates about how we expect the camp to be run, how we expect the culture to be here in Kansas City.
“... That acronym, it’s all things we can control, all the things we believe that will help us end up where we want to be.”
Wacha, Lugo and Estévez are the vocal veteran leaders, but to have Pasquantino and Witt included in the group speaks to the growth of the clubhouse.
“It shows a sign of maturity and leadership that we need,” Picollo said. “It’s their time to step into those roles. … We can try to relate to them, but we don’t know what they’re going through, the ups and downs. When they start taking that role and they’re the ones that are more on the front of things and driving the messaging, that’s when you know our team has arrived.”
How far it takes the Royals, well, that’s what the season is for – but it begins in the spring.