This story was excerpted from Anne Rogers’ Royals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CLEVELAND -- For decades now, the Royals have touted themselves as an athletic, speedy and unrelenting team when it comes to what they do on the bases. The 2026 team isn’t built any differently, and it understands that for the offense to be the best it can be, it has to include smart but aggressive baserunning.
“Staying aggressive and being fearless,” shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said. “That has to be who we are.”
The Royals had a renewed focus on their baserunning in Spring Training, with specific work dedicated to improving it from last year. Now 10 games into the season, there’s been a notable shift in how they’ve gone first to third, their routes and their aggressiveness on the bases. There have also been mistakes to clean up, like the pickoffs seen over the weekend against Milwaukee -- a team that defended the running game extremely well.
Entering Tuesday, the Royals are one of nine teams with 1 run via extra bases taken, just behind the Astros and Marlins (2). Their runs via stolen bases is still zero, same as every other team, although the Royals’ 10 stolen bases are tied with three other teams for third in MLB.
The Royals have been caught stealing four times, however, tied with four teams for second most in MLB. The Brewers, for example, are one of those teams -- but they’ve stolen 21 bases already this year.
“We’re pleased with the aggressiveness,” general manager J.J. Picollo said. “That’s a big part of being a good baserunning team. You’ve got to be aggressive. We’ve shown we’re going first to third really well. We’ve taken an extra base here and there that maybe last year we were a little bit more reluctant to take.
“The pickoffs are something that stand out, but when you get picked off a couple times, you don’t want to swing the other way, where now we’re not going to look to run. So you’re going to make some mistakes when you look to steal bases, and you really just have to learn from it.”
Learning from it is key and something the Royals hope to and must do as quickly as the mistakes inevitably happen. And they’re aiming to fix those mistakes quicker than in 2025, a year in which the club struggled on the bases. Last year, Kansas City registered minus-4 baserunning runs, which was tied with four other teams for 23rd in MLB.
Conversations in the offseason happened with players who the Royals see as their main base stealers, like Witt, Maikel Garcia and Tyler Tolbert -- among others -- along with the players they think could leverage their legs more in certain situations. In ‘25, the Royals’ 72.5% stolen base success rate ranked 29th in MLB, compared to their 81.2% success rate in ‘24, which ranked 10th.
“Once we fixed some of the issues we had last year, we finished strong, but that’s not a contending team,” third-base coach Vance Wilson said this spring. “From Opening Day to the last day, the consistency is really important. So the assessment was: How do we do that? How do we push guys a little harder to come in a little more prepared on the baserunning, base stealing, instead of waiting until we get to spring to get them ready?”
Base stealing is one thing, but with overall baserunning, the emphasis has been on the routes players take around the bases -- taking “optimal routes,” as the Royals call them. Collaboration with performance science has led to baserunning reports, in which the Royals use Hawk-Eye data on the field to configure the best route around the bases that allows runners to maintain their speed. Hitters are able to visually see their speed and efficiency of their movements.
It’s likely why the Royals have already been successful at taking the extra base early this year.
“Obviously, if you run directly at the bag and then turn at a right angle, it’s not going to be very quick,” applied performance scientist Corey Perrett said. “But on the other side, if you get too wide, the distance you’re covering is going to be further than you need it to be. There’s a sweet spot in the middle there that we try to aim for. … For the most part, it’s a little bit wider than they think they need to be. They get in trouble when they run straight to and through first base, and then that turn coming out of first gets really wide and slow. They can generally keep the speed up a little better if they’re slightly wider.”
Giving players a visual of those routes with cones or markings in the dirt was a key part of drills this spring, along with individual feedback following game action. The routes aren’t necessarily new information or revolutionary ideas, but the emphasis -- along with the data provided as evidence -- has been well-received by players.
“A lot of times you get thrown out by a foot or even an inch,” Witt said. “What can you do better? Is it the jump, the slide? Most of the time, it’s the route, especially from first to third or first to home, second to home. If we’re making sure we have the right route, we’re going to put ourselves in better positions.”
Spring drills don’t follow teams into the season, but the Royals’ reports and conversations have, letting players know what they’re doing right and wrong on the bases to create more efficiency.
That’s why, when mistakes happen -- like this past weekend -- the importance is placed on fixing it immediately, and making sure it doesn’t happen again.
“We have to do anything we can to think outside the box and find different ways to win,” Perrett said. “So much of baserunning, like how the baseball fan thinks about it, isn’t measurable. Being able to read the game, instincts, know the situations. Making sure we’re doing a really good job of measuring the things we can measure and improving on those things is a pretty good place to be.”