Kansas City Royals

58 seasons · 1969–2026 · 4,352–4,779 (.477) · 4 pennants · 2 World Series

Season by season

58 seasons, newest first. The year links to that season across all of baseball.

Year	Lg	Div	W	L	W–L%	Finish	R	RA	Result
2026	AL	—	62	76	.449	—	—	—
2025	AL	C	82	80	.506	3rd	651	637
2024	AL	C	86	76	.531	2nd	735	644	Wild card
2023	AL	C	56	106	.346	5th	676	859
2022	AL	C	65	97	.401	5th	640	810
2021	AL	C	74	88	.457	4th	686	788
2020	AL	C	26	34	.433	4th	248	272
2019	AL	C	59	103	.364	4th	691	869
2018	AL	C	58	104	.358	5th	638	833
2017	AL	C	80	82	.494	3rd	702	791
2016	AL	C	81	81	.500	3rd	675	712
2015	AL	C	95	67	.586	1st	724	641	World Series
2014	AL	C	89	73	.549	2nd	651	624	Pennant
2013	AL	C	86	76	.531	3rd	648	601
2012	AL	C	72	90	.444	3rd	676	746
2011	AL	C	71	91	.438	4th	730	762
2010	AL	C	67	95	.414	5th	676	845
2009	AL	C	65	97	.401	4th	686	842
2008	AL	C	75	87	.463	4th	691	781
2007	AL	C	69	93	.426	5th	706	778
2006	AL	C	62	100	.383	5th	757	971
2005	AL	C	56	106	.346	5th	701	935
2004	AL	C	58	104	.358	5th	720	905
2003	AL	C	83	79	.512	3rd	836	867
2002	AL	C	62	100	.383	4th	737	891
2001	AL	C	65	97	.401	5th	729	858
2000	AL	C	77	85	.475	4th	879	930
1999	AL	C	64	97	.398	4th	856	921
1998	AL	C	72	89	.447	3rd	714	899
1997	AL	C	67	94	.416	5th	747	820
1996	AL	C	75	86	.466	5th	746	786
1995	AL	C	70	74	.486	2nd	629	691
1994	AL	C	64	51	.557	3rd	574	532
1993	AL	W	84	78	.519	3rd	675	694
1992	AL	W	72	90	.444	5th	610	667
1991	AL	W	82	80	.506	6th	727	722
1990	AL	W	75	86	.466	6th	707	709
1989	AL	W	92	70	.568	2nd	690	635
1988	AL	W	84	77	.522	3rd	704	648
1987	AL	W	83	79	.512	2nd	715	691
1986	AL	W	76	86	.469	3rd	654	673
1985	AL	W	91	71	.562	1st	687	639	World Series
1984	AL	W	84	78	.519	1st	673	686	Division
1983	AL	W	79	83	.488	2nd	696	767
1982	AL	W	90	72	.556	2nd	784	717
1981	AL	W	50	53	.485	4th	397	405	Division
1980	AL	W	97	65	.599	1st	809	694	Pennant
1979	AL	W	85	77	.525	2nd	851	816
1978	AL	W	92	70	.568	1st	743	634	Division
1977	AL	W	102	60	.630	1st	822	651	Division
1976	AL	W	90	72	.556	1st	713	611	Division
1975	AL	W	91	71	.562	2nd	710	649
1974	AL	W	77	85	.475	5th	667	662
1973	AL	W	88	74	.543	2nd	755	752
1972	AL	W	76	78	.494	4th	580	545
1971	AL	W	85	76	.528	2nd	603	566
1970	AL	W	65	97	.401	4th	611	705
1969	AL	W	69	93	.426	4th	586	688

A dash is a value the source has not published — the season still being played has no final run totals. An empty result column means the club did not win any of those things that year, except in 1994, when a strike ended the season before the postseason, and in a season still under way — then there was nothing to win.

Career leaders with this club

Top 20 by wins above replacement accumulated with the Kansas City Royals, and the same for pitchers. Seasons where a player was mostly somewhere else are not counted here.

Batting20 players

Player	Years	WAR	G	PA	H	HR	RBI	AVG
George Brett	1973–1993	98.2	2,707	11,624	3,154	317	1,596	.305
Amos Otis	1970–1983	63.7	1,891	7,969	1,977	193	992	.280
Hal McRae	1973–1987	48.1	1,837	7,361	1,924	169	1,012	.293
Willie Wilson	1976–1990	40.6	1,787	7,302	1,968	40	509	.289
Salvador Perez	2011–2026	38.5	1,835	7,430	1,822	320	1,078	.261
Mike Sweeney	1995–2007	29.6	1,282	5,278	1,398	197	837	.299
Frank White	1973–1990	28.0	2,324	8,467	2,006	160	886	.255
Bobby Witt	2022–2026	27.2	745	3,249	855	121	422	.289
Billy Butler	2007–2014	25.2	1,166	4,811	1,273	127	628	.295
Alex Gordon	2007–2020	23.1	1,753	7,247	1,643	190	749	.257
Carlos Beltran	1998–2003	22.7	726	3,203	825	108	465	.288
John Mayberry	1972–1977	21.6	897	3,752	816	143	552	.261
Lorenzo Cain	2011–2017	21.5	713	2,894	765	56	308	.289
Whit Merrifield	2016–2022	21.5	907	3,939	1,035	79	403	.285
Kevin Seitzer	1986–1991	19.6	741	3,163	809	33	265	.294
Danny Tartabull	1987–1991	18.4	657	2,684	674	124	425	.290
David DeJesus	2003–2010	18.3	876	3,799	971	61	390	.289
Mike Macfarlane	1987–1997	18.2	887	3,139	716	103	398	.256
Darrell Porter	1977–1980	17.7	555	2,262	514	61	301	.271
Mike Moustakas	2011–2018	17.3	988	3,953	908	147	474	.251

Pitching20 players

Player	Years	WAR	G	W	L	SV	IP	SO	ERA
Kevin Appier	1989–2004	33.9	295	121	95	0	1893.3	1,506	3.56
Bret Saberhagen	1984–1991	31.0	252	110	78	1	1660.3	1,093	3.21
Mark Gubicza	1984–1996	30.3	382	132	135	2	2218.7	1,366	3.91
Dennis Leonard	1974–1986	26.6	312	144	106	1	2187.0	1,323	3.70
Paul Splittorff	1970–1984	24.4	429	166	143	1	2554.7	1,057	3.81
Zack Greinke	2004–2023	20.0	266	66	91	1	1387.3	1,101	3.93
Charlie Leibrandt	1984–1989	14.8	194	76	61	0	1257.0	618	3.60
Steve Busby	1972–1980	12.8	167	70	54	0	1060.7	659	3.72
Dick Drago	1969–1973	12.5	182	61	70	1	1134.0	577	3.52
Tom Gordon	1988–1995	11.4	274	79	71	3	1149.7	999	4.02
Danny Jackson	1983–1987	10.1	119	37	49	1	712.7	430	3.69
Danny Duffy	2011–2021	9.7	234	68	68	1	1172.3	1,048	3.95
Brady Singer	2020–2024	8.9	127	36	44	0	685.3	645	4.28
Al Fitzmorris	1969–1976	8.3	243	70	48	7	1098.0	391	3.46
Dan Quisenberry	1979–1987	7.8	553	51	43	237	895.0	312	2.52
Jose Rosado	1996–2000	7.5	125	37	45	1	720.3	484	4.27
Larry Gura	1976–1984	7.4	307	111	78	11	1697.0	631	3.70
Michael Wacha	2024–2026	7.3	87	31	29	0	510.0	407	3.51
Cole Ragans	2023–2026	7.2	82	22	21	0	379.3	479	3.63
Greg Holland	2010–2021	7.0	394	24	17	159	403.7	514	2.72

Best single seasons

The highest wins above replacement any Kansas City Royals player has put up in one year.

BattingHR · RBI · AVG

1	George Brett1980 · 24 HR · 118 RBI · .390	9.9
2	George Brett1985 · 30 HR · 112 RBI · .335	9.7
3	Bobby Witt2024 · 32 HR · 109 RBI · .332	9.2
4	George Brett1979 · 23 HR · 107 RBI · .329	8.7
5	John Mayberry1975 · 34 HR · 106 RBI · .291	7.6
6	Amos Otis1978 · 22 HR · 96 RBI · .298	7.5
7	Willie Wilson1980 · 3 HR · 49 RBI · .326	7.5
8	Darrell Porter1979 · 20 HR · 112 RBI · .291	7.4
9	George Brett1976 · 7 HR · 67 RBI · .333	7.4
10	Amos Otis1971 · 15 HR · 79 RBI · .301	7.4

PitchingW · SO · ERA

1	Zack Greinke2009 · 16 W · 242 SO · 2.16	7.1
2	Dennis Leonard1977 · 20 W · 244 SO · 3.04	7.0
3	Bret Saberhagen1989 · 23 W · 193 SO · 2.16	6.5
4	Kevin Appier1993 · 18 W · 186 SO · 2.56	6.0
5	Steve Busby1974 · 22 W · 198 SO · 3.39	5.8
6	Mark Gubicza1989 · 15 W · 173 SO · 3.04	5.6
7	Mark Gubicza1988 · 20 W · 183 SO · 2.70	5.1
8	Bret Saberhagen1985 · 20 W · 158 SO · 2.87	5.1
9	Kevin Appier1996 · 14 W · 207 SO · 3.62	4.8
10	Bret Saberhagen1987 · 18 W · 163 SO · 3.36	4.5

How this page is built

Every row below is the club's own season, 1969 to 2026. That is 58 of them, 4,352–4,779 in all, a winning percentage of .477. 2 World Series — 1985, 2015.

Wins and losses on this page come straight from the source; the player tables do not. A season line in this database carries one club, the one where the player took the most plate appearances — or, for a pitcher, recorded the most outs — that year. So a player traded in July is credited to one side of the trade and not the other, and the career totals below are the club he mostly played for rather than a strict split. Wins above replacement is worked out per season here, and a season cannot be cut in half without recomputing it on a different basis, which would leave two numbers on this site that disagree. One basis, stated, is the honest version of that trade-off.

What the columns mean, and where the franchise begins

Finishing position means a different thing before and after divisions arrived in 1969. Also: why the club's history starts in 1969 here, and what the run columns are for.

The franchise boundary is the source database's, not ours. Each season carries a franchise identifier, and that identifier is what groups the rows on this page. It merges moves and renamings — Brooklyn and Los Angeles are one club under it — and it also keeps some things apart that share a city and a nickname: the National Association clubs of 1871 to 1875 are separate franchises from the National League clubs that followed them in the same towns. We could have merged those by hand, and then this page would carry a career record that no published source agrees with. Following the identifier means the totals here can be checked against somebody else's.

The best and worst of it: 1977 and 2005. The 1977 club went 102–60 (.630); the 2005 club went 56–106 (.346). Schedules were not always the same length — a nineteenth-century season could be seventy games and 2020 was sixty — so read the percentage rather than the win column when the two are far apart in time.

Finishing position means different things in different eras. Before 1969 there were no divisions, so the finish column is the club's place in the whole league. From 1969 it is the place within a division, which is a smaller field, and a third place in a six-team division is not the same achievement as a third place in a ten-team league. The division column says which one applies. Nothing on this page is postseason record: the wins and losses are regular season only, and the World Series, pennant and division marks in the result column say what the club went on to win, not how it did once it got there.

Runs scored and runs allowed are here because they explain the record. A club that wins more games than its run difference suggests has usually won a lot of close ones, and that tends not to repeat. The two columns are the cheapest way to see whether a season was as good as its win total, and they are the input to most of the modern estimates of how many games a team should have won. They are blank for the season still being played where the source has not published them yet.

Data for 1871 to 2025: Lahman Baseball Database 2025, compiled by SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) and licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported. Negro Leagues data licensed from Seamheads.com and included under SABR major-league recommendations (2021-02-11, 2024-06-03). This page groups the source database's team seasons by its franchise identifier and adds up the Kansas City Royals careers of the players on the season pages. — the WAR columns are computed here — and they are published under the same CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported licence, as ShareAlike requires. That database is published once a season is complete, so the 2026 figures on this site come from a different place: the MLB Stats API, whose notice reads “Copyright 2026 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. Use of any content on this page acknowledges agreement to the terms posted here http://gdx.mlb.com/components/copyright.txt”. Those numbers are MLB Advanced Media, L.P.’s, not SABR (Society for American Baseball Research)’s, and they carry that notice rather than the CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported licence above. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Major League Baseball or any of its clubs.