Kansas City Royals Top Ten Prospects For 2017
2. Josh Staumont, RHP
Birthdate: 12/21/93 (22 years old)
Level(s) Played in 2016: high A, AA
Stats in 2016: 123 1/3 IP, 4.23 ERA, 1.69 WHIP, 17.93 BB%, 28.79 K%
Staumont was a guy who I knew would be on my top 10 based on my own viewings. I’m hard on guys who struggle to locate, and in the games I saw of Staumont in the Carolina League, he was unable to locate at all, but the stuff was evident and certainly top 10.
Then I kept hearing from guys that he was a clear top 3 prospect in the Royals system, especially those who were seeing him in the Arizona Fall League or had seen him in the Texas League.
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Interestingly, the promotion to a hitter-friendly AA league in the Texas League seemed to be the trigger that unleashed the “good” Staumont, and he tore apart that league, with a 3.04 ERA and 1.57 WHIP over 50 1/3 innings at AA with a 37/73 BB/K ratio after having a nearly 1/1 BB/K ratio in the high-A Carolina League.
The Royals got Staumont in the 2nd round out of Azusa Pacific in the 2015 draft purely due to his monster velocity. He routinely sits in the mid-90s and has touched as high as 102 in short bursts with his four-seam fastball.
He works that with a two-seam sinking fastball that runs in the upper 90s and is near-impossible to square up. When he locates just his two fastballs, he is nearly untouchable, but there in lies the problem.
Staumont has issues with his mechanics due to high “explosion” in the body at multiple points of his delivery, which generates great velocity, but it also allows him to get off track in a real hurry in his location. Staumont showed an ability to keep the delivery much better in AA, but at that point, he showed the weakness of his two off speed pitches, a lazy curve that has a slow break and a change that really lacks movement.
If he can get his off speed stuff working and hold his delivery, he’s got the makings of an absolute ace in the game. However, there are dozens of pitchers that this could be said about on a yearly basis and one every 3-4 years actually does it. He should be an elite reliever with his pairing of the two elite fastballs if he cannot make it as a starter.
Next: #1