Offense has been down across all of baseball, but perhaps no team has felt that quite as much as Kansas City. Through the first month of the season, the Royals have been among the worst offensive teams in the majors, and as a team, they're only slashing .222/.291/.325 with a .281 wOBA and a 83wRC+. There are some underlying signs that they could be heating up though -- including Bobby Witt Jr.'s first career home run -- and while speaking to 610's Fescoe In The Morning, manager Mike Matheny explained why he thinks a big turnaround is coming.
"They have a lot of faith in themselves," he said. "They know the potential that they have. It can be a dangerous, relentless offense. You mix speed that's as good as any speed in the game with guys that can hit with power. We know that the field's been playing big and hasn't allowed for many power numbers, but the group has the ability to do some damage. Not that you expect to do it every single night, but we've had some balls hammered ... it's amazing -- even though you hit balls really hard, and you have the right exit velocity, you've got the right launch angle, and you're not getting the right results? That starts to build pressure. We talked about Bobby Witt still wanting to fill [the home run] column, but we have a guys wanting to fill a lot of columns. Guys that know they just haven't begun to get hot yet. They're human, you're going to begin to press. What am I going to do to make this happen? Sometimes it just takes a couple good days that kind of unlocks and frees up everybody to then trust themselves and that's when natural things happen."
You can listen to Matheny's entire interview in the embedded player below: