Ryan Heffernon mused on Kyle Isbel’s role on the 2025 Royals just a few weeks ago, coming to the conclusion that his good-but-not-great defense does not quite outweigh his lack of bat. He compared Isbel against such defensive wizards as Michael A Taylor, Billy Hamilton, and Kevin Kiermaier, whose contributions on defense made up for the lack of bat to produce average-to-above-average seasons by fWAR.
And...yeah. We have 1100 MLB plate appearances amounting to a 77 wRC+ and 3.5 fWAR across parts of four MLB seasons. He’s actually slightly improved his wRC+ each of the past two seasons, but “slightly improved”, to Ryan’s point, may not be enough.