How Royals’ Jac Caglianone has handled struggles — leading to his 1st HR at The K
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Caglianone hit his first home run at The K after enduring a 3-for-52 slump.
- The rookie emphasized defense, teamwork and preparation to stay grounded.
- Royals staff cited his resilience and daily routines as keys to long-term growth.
Amid a 3-for-52 funk at the plate, would-be Royals savior Jac Caglianone on Sunday in Arizona absorbed another jarring twist to his big-league initiation.
Girded as he might have been for Anthony DeSclafani’s pitch bearing in on his right foot, the ball then caromed hard off his face.
“It was one of those, ‘What just happened?’” Caglianone said in an interview with The Star on Tuesday afternoon, laughing and adding, “Out of nowhere, hits me in the face.”
Perhaps not unlike what the rest of this past month might have felt like to Caglianone, the sixth overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft who was virtually uncontainable in brief Double-A and Triple-A stints this season but has grappled to gain traction since his much-anticipated call-up.
What happened that Sunday, though, tells you something about how Caglianone has been bearing up to what manager Matt Quatraro aptly summarized thusly:
“This is probably the first time he’s struggled like this in his life, and he’s doing it on the biggest stage.”
Pretty tough stuff, to be sure.
And many a day you can almost feel it draining a guy whose default demeanor only a few weeks ago was a radiant smile.
Or, heck, even inflicting pain on him like it did Sunday.
In what might be considered a microcosm of his overall approach, though, Caglianone checked to make sure he still had all his teeth, took his base … and promptly stole second for his first major-league steal.
Never mind if that’s not exactly what the Royals are seeking from him.
“It was nice to get that one out of the way,” said Caglianone, who went on to score the third run in a 4-0 win over the Diamondbacks.
Some element of that resolve no doubt was at play Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium, where Caglianone uncorked a far nicer one to get out of the way:
His 421-foot home run in the second inning against Pittsburgh was his first at The K and just his third overall since being promoted and making his MLB debut on June 3.
“It was one of those memories,” he said after the 4-3 Royals win, “you’ll remember for a long time.”
Less sensationally but also fundamental to the Royals’ walk-off victory was Caglianone’s ninth-inning flyout to deep right to set up Nick Loftin’s game-winning single by advancing Maikel Garcia to third base after he’d fallen behind in the count.
“I mean, his heart rate’s probably going a million miles an hour there,” Quatraro said. “And he wants to come through. All the things that you could imagine: for the team, for the city, for himself, all those things. And to slow it down after he got down in the count … and then to put that swing on it right there … changed the whole outcome of the game.”
Yes, it’s a long way from sustained consistency.
But it made for a tangible, and maybe even vital, measure of reassurance that striving to do everything right ultimately will reset him back on the trajectory that made him such an enticing prospect.
In addition to a yawning offensive need, one of the reasons the Royals were comfortable calling him up on an accelerated timeline was because, as Quatraro reminded on Tuesday, “we believe that he can handle this kind of thing.”
Part of how he’s handling it can be found in his diligence.
Like being the first to work every day with hitting coach Alec Zumwalt, Quatraro said, as he strives to get to the sweet spot: condensing all the confounding elements of hitting down to swinging at the right pitches.
Another element of navigating it has been Caglianone understanding what he knows he can control as he strives to find that groove.
“The biggest thing that I can focus on is just being a good teammate,” he said in our pregame interview, pointing to the pride he’s taken in the outfield position he’s been learning at the big-league level. “And honestly, like, I’ve been just relying a lot on defense. … I just want to save as many runs for our pitchers as I can.”
When the Royals win, he added, “it’s a good day, regardless of how the stats look or anything like that.”
Not that it’s been simple for Caglianone to reconcile the situation.
As much as the Royals appreciate a certain maturity beyond his years, he’s also still just 22 years old and always has been hard on himself.
By way of a recent example, general manager J.J. Picollo pointed to the video of Caglianone getting his call-up news from Storm Chasers manager Mike Jirschele.
When Jirschele asked Caglianone what he thought he’d been called in for, Caglianone reckoned it was for thwacking the knob of his bat against the stairs in frustration.
So now it’s about being able to control the frustration and not allowing it to linger or fester, something Picollo believes can only come from Caglianone trusting the process more at the plate.
“Right now, I think he’s trying to force the game instead of letting the game come to him,” Picollo said Monday, later adding that it’s important to “keep an eye on” his attitude and confidence level.
Beyond a few exhilarating glimpses, like his two home-run game at Texas and a four-hit performance against the White Sox, Caglianone acknowledges this has been a challenging time.
Maybe all the more so since this is the first time in his life he’s lived alone.
With teammate Carter Jensen in Omaha, for instance, they would debrief about how they were feeling after every game and unwind watching something or playing a video game.
Now when he gets home, well, mostly he just thinks.
He laughed as he said that but apparently was not joking.
“It’s definitely been, you know, rough,” he said. “But … that’s baseball.”
As such, he has dedicated himself to being “super-intentional with pregame stuff, trying to get the body and the mind right for 6:40” — typical game time.
He’s leaned on family and friends and teammates, who’ve embraced him since the day he arrived.
By talking with draft-class peers who’ve also been called up, he’s allowed himself to recognize that there’s “a decent gap between Triple-A and the big leagues.”
And he’s immersed himself in the notebooks he’s been filling up since spring training that featured wisdom of peers such as Bobby Witt Jr. and Vinnie Pasquantino and the likes of Royals Hall of Famer Alex Gordon — whom Caglianone had the presence of mind to ask to elaborate on his early struggles and transition from third base to outfield.
When we first spoke about the notebooks in Surprise, Caglianone said he turned to them often.
“Especially,” he said then, “if I feel like I go through one day where I feel like I wasn’t where I wanted to be.”
So he’s consulted those plenty in recent weeks … and added a number of fresh entries.
“Every day,” he said, smiling. “Every day.”
All of that has helped, including a notion we’ve kicked around in a couple previous conversations:
The sustaining idea that everything will be OK in the end … and that if it’s not OK it is not the end.
“I know this will pass,” he said, later adding, “It’s all part of it. There are plenty of better days ahead.”
Even if it’s never quite been like this, well, Sunday wasn’t the first time he’d been hit in the mouth playing baseball.
“I know the feeling,” he said.
And how to keep going afterward.
This story was originally published July 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "How Royals’ Jac Caglianone has handled struggles — leading to his 1st HR at The K."