While Opening Day lineup discussion is all well and fun, the reality is that there are players who won’t make the 2025 Opening Day roster but will play in multiple games throughout the year.
Last year, 16 Royals hitters accrued 100 or more plate appearances and 17 Royals pitchers threw for 20 or more innings, making a total of 33 players who made some sort of sustained impact. The year prior, there were 39 such players, and in 2022 there were 34 such players. With a 26-man roster, in other words, that means that there are going to be in the realm of 10 or so players who don’t make the Opening Day roster but who end up on the active roster for sizable portions of the year.