Kansas City Royals: Top 10 Rookie-Eligible Prospects for 2018
We have reached the point of the offseason where prospect lists abound. We continue our top 10 prospects for every team with the Kansas City Royals!
Our team top 10 prospect lists at Call to the Pen are spearheaded by Benjamin Chase. Today, he gives us the top ten prospects for the Kansas City Royals.
This season, we will be going through teams by division, in order of 2017 record. The AL East will be first, followed by the AL Central and AL West. Then the focus will shift to the National League in the same order.
The format will be as it was last season for the same lists, with a system review, which will include last season’s list. The top 10 will follow in reverse order, two players per page in order to give adequate space to each player. Major trades or international signings will lead to an updated top 10!
Finally, don’t go away after #1 is revealed as each list will also contain a player either signed in the 2017 international free agent class or drafted in 2017 that isn’t part of the top 10 and should be tracked. Last season’s mentions in that area made over half of the top 10s this season, so this is a great way to get to know a player who could be making a big splash in the organization.
System overview
In last year’s overview, I estimated that you’d know how the Kansas City Royals were going to address their future by Memorial Day – whether they were in it for 2017 and were going to hold onto their players or if they were going to trade away some of the key pieces that allowed them to make back-to-back World Series appearances.
Instead, the team held onto most of those pieces but never really supplemented them well for a playoff run, not really making a true decision on whether they were going to re-tool or have to go into a full-on rebuild.
In retrospect, their first two selections in the 2017 draft being high school players and focusing other selections early on JuCo players should have given some insight to their direction toward a rebuild.
The Royals will open this season with one of the worst farm systems in the league, with their top 4 prospects in our list here all teenagers. If the Royals allow all of their top free agents to walk away this offseason, it is quite feasible that they would have 5 picks in the top 40 selections in what is considered a very deep draft of talent, even though they do not select until #18 in the first round.
So while this system looks rough now, it’s quite feasible that the system looks significantly better in October after the draft is done.
Let’s take a look at that system….
Next: #9 and #10