Michael Massey's Mysterious Start

The second baseman's bat speed and exit velocities are down. There might be an unfortunate explanation

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It’s time we look under the hood on one of the Royals largest underperformers to this point: Michael Massey.

He’s slashing .188/.206/219 as of Thursday morning. He’s hit precisely zero home runs. A few doubles are his only extra-base hits. Massey’s walked twice in 103 plate appearances.

Worse yet, as of Wednesday afternoon, his average exit velocity (86.7 MPH) and hard-hit rate (29.6%) are career-worsts by a long mile. There’s really not much in his statistical profile that points to bad luck or portends positive regression on the way.

Via Baseball Savant

It doesn’t appear to be a process issue, either. His swing rate is down a couple percentage points and the whiff rate is actually lower than his career average. He’s chasing less (33.2%) than his career norm but his chase contact (75.4%, 7th most among qualified hitters) is high, so maybe he’s just making too much contact with bad pitches?

That could be part of the problem — Massey’s average exit velocity on pitches out of the zone is 82.7 MPH, but that represents just a quarter of his balls in play. On pitches in the zone, he’s averaging only 88 MPH EV, still shy of his career average on all balls in play, in zone or out.

Let’s take it one step further. Prior to this season, Massey managed a 92.2 MPH average EV and 47.5% hard-hit rate on pitches in the “heart” zone, per Statcast. In 2025, that number is 88.3 MPH with a truly difficult-to-understand 28.2% hard-hit rate.

To help establish a baseline, MLB hitters on “heart” zone pitches are producing a 93 MPH average EV and 51.2% hard-hit rate this season. Effectively, Massey was in line with league average in previous years on those hittable offerings.

Which brings me to my theory, and one that I don’t love floating without evidence, but I’m running out of answers… I wonder if he’s hurt.

We know Massey’s history with back issues, with Anne Rogers of MLB.com going so far as to describe them as “chronic” when he hit the injured list last July.

I want to be clear, this is pure speculation on my part. Massey’s played in a large majority of Kansas City’s games to this point, usually at second base — you’d think if he was hurt (or at least if the team knew he was) he’d be getting more time at DH or on the pine.

That said, there are a few things that point toward some external factor (like an injury) sapping his power.

First, the average exit velocities we’ve already been over. Second, Massey’s maximum exit velocity, which is just 106 MPH this season. That’s well short of his highs in 2023 (110.3) and 2024 (110).

While we’re just now into May, he’s already approaching the thresholds at which maximum EV is typically established; 80% of hitters reach their 98% EV threshold by their 100th batted ball event, according to research published by FanGraphs in 2020. Massey is at 81 batted balls as of Friday morning.

Finally, the bat speed. Massey’s never had a particularly lethal bat speed, averaging 70.8 MPH and 70.9 MPH the last two seasons, just below MLB average. In 2025, he’s down to 70.1 MPH.

Via Baseball Savant

On top of the averages, he’s reached a peak bat speed of 77 MPH through the season’s first month. Last year, he reached 77 MPH or better, topping out at 82 MPH, on 10 separate occasions. Per Jon Anderson’s MLB Data Warehouse, Massey’s 75th-percentile bat speed this season is 71.8 MPH; a year ago, it was 73 MPH.

We know Massey was injured at times in 2024. He had the IL stints to prove it. This year? His Statcast metrics and bat tracking data are down, even from a year ago when we know he was hurt.

Of course, I hope Massey is fine. I hope this first month is simply a blip on the radar, but it’s getting harder to ignore as the data piles up.