Kansas City Royals: 2018 Minor League Awards
The 2018 season was the first of what will be a few rough ones for the Kansas City Royals as they begin a rebuild. The minors have already seen fruits.
As part of our continuing coverage at Call to the Pen of the minor leagues, we will be covering each organization’s top players for 2018. The coverage will go in reverse order of record. Today, we will look at the Kansas City Royals.
We are going to review the system’s leaders for each organization statistically, then choose one hitter and one pitcher to honor for every team. This will be primarily based on statistical performance, though some “age relative to level” could come into play, so a very impressive season from a 28-year-old in AA will rank below a nearly as impressive season from a 20-year-old at the same level.
After we review each organization’s hitter and pitcher of the year, we will close out October with Call To The Pen’s Minor League team of the year. That will lead into November starting our team top 10 prospect lists. In other words, there will be plenty of minor league content on the way at CTTP, so keep coming back for more each day this offseason!!
Kansas City Royals minor leagues
The Kansas City Royals built up one of the most enviable farm systems in the history of the game in the early 2010s before striking it big with back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014-2015, winning in 2015. Now that many of the pieces of those teams hit free agency and departed, the Royals’ financial situation requires building up that farm system again.
This was really the first year seeing the results of intentional “build” drafting done in 2017, a change in their drafting style. It’s led to what will be a very deep top 10, even if there isn’t an elite top-shelf prospect to head that list.
Before we offer up awards on the season, let’s take a look at the system’s statistical leaders:
Organization Leaders (min. 150 PA, 50 IP)
BA: Kyle Kasser .357
OBP: Nathan Eaton .427
SLG: Nathan Eaton .581
OPS: Nathan Eaton 1.008
R: Warling Vicente 80
H: Nicky Lopez 155
2B: Frank Schwindel 38
3B: Nathan Eaton 12
HR: Seuly Matias 31
RBI: Frank Schwindel 93
SB: Nick Heath 39
TB: Frank Schwindel 258
W: J.C. Cloney 12
G: Richard Lovelady 46
GS: Four tied with 26
IP: Foster Griffin 152 2/3
SV: Tyler Zuber 18
K: Jake Kalish 124
ERA: Daury Cabrera 1.16
WHIP: Daury Cabrera 0.87
K/9: Josh Staumont 12.5
K/BB: Daniel Lynch 7.63