Low scoring games expose KC Royals desperate need for Vinnie Pasquantino to improve

It was a frustrating night all around at the plate for the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday night after they were shut down and shut out by the Minnesota Twins in a 4-0 loss.

Low scoring games are becoming somewhat of a trend for Kansas City this season, as last night's contest was their sixth time scoring two or less runs in a game. That's half the season.

While the blame for the inconsistencies can be spread across multiple different names, there's one name in particular that the spotlight is on more than others. That name is Vinnie Pasquantino.

KC Royals desperately need Vinnie Pasquantino to be better

After a good year last year in 2024 - mildly brought down by a month long injury at the end of the regular season - where he finished just one homer shy of 20 and three RBI shy of 100, hopes were high for Pasquantino to finally have that long-awaited breakout towards stardom.

However, 2025 hasn't lived up to the hype for the 27-year-old first baseman through the opening 12 games, as Royals fans are still waiting for that out-and-out Pasquatch sighting. He's hitting just .171 with a .580 OPS with one home run and 10 RBI.

While 10 RBI in seven games shows the run-production aspect of his game hasn't gone anywhere, it doesn't tell the full story of Pasquantino at the plate. Sure, he leads the team in RBI by a fairly significant margin at this time - as Maikel Garcia is second with six driven in - but six of his RBI have come off two hits and three have been off groundouts or sac-flies.

At the end of the day, we're seeing stark contrasts from Pasquantino from an underlying metric standpoint.

Entering Wednesday's contest, Pasquantino's flyball rate had skyrocketed by over 20 percent, from a 42.9 percent last season to 65.6 percent this year, while his line drive rate fell from 17.6 percent to 9.4 percent. This makes more sense when you also consider that his hard-hit rate has fallen over six percent, his soft-contact rate has risen nearly nine percent and his average exit velocity has fallen from 91.0 mph to 87.7 mph.

An 0-for-4 outing last night with a pair of groundouts and a pair of fly outs won't do much, if anything, anything to help the cause.

And last night's game was the prime example of how his struggles are affecting the rest of the order. In the fourth inning, Bobby Witt Jr. carried some momentum he's gained in recent days and got to starter Joe Ryan by slamming a double to right field. Then, Pasquantino comes up and promptly flies out to left.

Moving to the ninth, Witt finds another way to get to the Twins pitching and works a two-out walk, only to have Pasquantino ground out to first to end the game.

Other hitters in proximity to Pasquantino in the lineup - like Jonathan India in the leadoff role, Witt in the two-hole, and even Kyle Isbel turning the lineup over in the nine-hole - are finding ways to keep the line moving and Pasquantino simply isn't doing his part at the moment.

Now, it's extremely early and there's still plenty of reason to believe that Pasquantino will find a way to break out of this funk and put together a solid season. However, it's starting to feel like eons since his Opening Day three-run blast.

For the Royals' sake, with how heavily this lineup depends on him, they're going to need their big-name first baseman to right the ship sooner-rather-than-later.