KC Royals: Top 5 Kansas City speedsters, Part 1

Speed is synonymous with the KC Royals. Jarrod Dyson made “That’s what speed do” famous and the phrase perfectly epitomizes the organization’s identity. The club always has standout speedsters on its roster and Dyson, so fittingly nicknamed “Mr. Zoombiya,” is only the tip of Kansas City’s speedster iceberg. In fact, Dyson is just one of many players who’ve contributed to Kansas City’s stolen base game, causing headaches for opposing pitchers while wearing Royal blue.

We’re stepping back in time here at Kings of Kauffman to see which Royals were the fastest in team history. In Part 1, we present several Royals who didn’t make our Top 5 and our No. 5 speedster; in Part 2 tomorrow, we’ll reveal Nos. 1-4.

There are no overarching criteria for our rankings. The amount of stolen bases that were attempted and successful are, of course, relevant. Although Statcast has in recent years provided fans with actual, measured base running speed, that will not affect past players, and will only be used to enlighten us about how much faster the more recent players who made this list are. All sprint speeds in Part 1 and Part 2 for recent players who made our list were based on statistics found at BaseballSavant.

It took a minimum amount of 1,000 plate appearances while playing for Kansas City to qualify for our rankings. So, while Terrance Gore may have recorded a sprint speed of 30.2 back in 2019, ranking fourth best in the majors, his 72 plate appearances with the Royals don’t make the cut.

If you think someone is missing from this list or that a player should have been ranked higher, let us know in the comments section following this story.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at Royal speedsters.