Kansas City Royals Catcher Carter Jensen Having a Productive Season Despite Flaws Showing Through
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With the 2026 season being competitively over for the Kansas City Royals, the rest of the season is set to do some evaluating of the roster. There are plenty of players to evaluate, with Carter Jensen being one of those players as he looks to finish up his first full season. So let's evaluate and dive into the numbers.
As always, starting basic, Jensen is slashing .222/.299/.408 for an OPS of .707 and a wRC+ of 93. He isn't in the Rookie of the Year discussion, but that is a solid first full season for any rookie. Let's dive a touch deeper into the numbers.
The Good: Contact Profile, Approach, Arm, Strong First Half of Season
Jensen is taking his first steps into being the catcher of the future for the Royals, and one thing he has done well this season is the quality of contact he gets. He has an average exit velocity of 90.7 mph, a barrel rate of 10.0%, a hard-hit rate of 43.7%, and a 73.8 mph average bat speed. Those rank in the 63rd or better percentile on Baseball Savant.
The quality of contact has been above average all season, and he has also shown a solid approach at the plate with a solid 10.0% walk rate. All of that combined into a strong first half of the year for Jensen, as he had two great months of offense. In the first month of action, he had an OPS of .818 and a wRC+ of 126, before a slow May derailed the hot start.
Then in July, Jensen got hot again, alongside the Royals' bats as a whole. June saw Jensen get the power stroke going as he slugged .530 and posted a season-best .860 OPS and 133 wRC+. The only issue with Jensen's first half was a dud May, which brings his first half down a fair bit. He slashed .236/.303/.421 for an OPS of .724 and a wRC+ of 97.
Overall, this season, he has also shown some good defensive improvements, specifically with his cannon of an arm. He has thrown out runners at a 36.9% clip and has been a solid framer with two framing runs. In terms of Fielding Run Value (FRV), he has a value of two which is solid for a catcher who struggles at one key aspect of catching. Let's dive a little deeper and talk about the flaws.
The Flawed Season: Blocking, Breaking Balls, Swing/Take Profile, and Start of Second Half of Season
Sticking to the defensive side of the ball, Jensen has struggled with blocking, and according to Baseball Savant's blocking-above-average stat, Jensen is one of the worst catchers in baseball in terms of blocking. He and Logan O'Hoppe are the worst catchers in terms of blocking, with values of -10. It is something he is going to have to iron out, and if he does he already has a solid foundation as a good defensive catcher.
Back to the offense, Jensen's struggles at the plate throughout the year can be as simple as he hasn't been able to hit breaking balls. He is hitting breaking balls at a .170 clip and slugging them at a .286 clip. On his run value chart, Jensen's worst pitches have been the slider, sweeper, and curveball. The struggles have mainly been with the slider and sweeper, as his run values on both are at -6 and -4.
He hits both pitches at a .154 clip with a below .300 slugging percentage. To make matters a little worse, he doesn't exactly hit 4-seam fastballs well either, at a .188 clip. On the bright side, Jensen mashes split-fingers, cutters, and sinkers.
Now we will circle back to his approach, because despite having a solid walk rate, there are more things to address than that. Two key stats that stand out in his profile are his Z-swing% at 66.8% and his Z-contact% at 84.0%. He is about average in Z-swing%, but well below average in Z-contact%. His struggles with contact in the zone lie in the fact that he struggles with pitches up in the zone. Those struggles have also led to him having an inflated launch angle of 21.2 degrees this season, as he is under fastballs in 60% of his swings.
That leads to an overall struggle shown by his swing/take profile. On pitches in the heart and shadow of the plate, he is worth a combined -21. That is very much not ideal. His struggles in the heart of the plate are that he takes 25% of the pitches he sees in the heart. When it comes to the shadow of the zone, he is more 50/50 on swings and takes, but the swings have not garnered much, as he has amassed -16 swing runs in the shadow, i.e., whiffing or getting bad results a lot more often than not.
The culmination of these problems has been apparent since the All-Star break, as Jensen is slashing .170/.284/.364 for an OPS of .648 and wRC+ of 80. His two saving graces since the break have been his .193 ISO and 13.7% walk rate since the break. If we take his numbers from the start of August, it gets worse, as he is 3-for-42 in the month so far. Two of his hits are for extra bases, and he has drawn seven walks, but his issues at the plate have been apparent.
Conclusion
While it may seem like the negatives outweigh the positives in this article, Jensen is still just undergoing his first full season in the Majors and has shown plenty of sparks of his potential this season. Development isn't a straight line in baseball, and the rest of the season allows Jensen to grow and develop. While he isn't in the Rookie of the Year conversation, he still has had a productive first season despite also being a flawed batter at the current moment.
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Trey is no stranger to writing about the Royals as he has done it for 6 years now for various blogs (Kings of Kauffman, Inside The Royals, and Farm to Fountains). He is a graduate of Baker University with a degree in Mass Media with an emphasis in sports media. He enjoys watching and researching sports as well as gaming.
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