The Royals need something extra out of their farm system this time around
The ghosts of the past are knocking
Quiz time! First (and only) question: why did the Kansas City Royals never make it back to the playoffs with their core after winning the 2015 World Series?
There are a lot of semi-correct answers on this one. I’ll take “poor free agent spending,” “bad trades,” and “injury luck” for partial credit. But there’s only one true answer, which is that the vaunted Royals farm system hadn’t produced any talent in years by the time the Royals won it all, and that is what doomed them not to return.
See, it takes time for players to get drafted and make their way through to being impact players. Alex Gordon, for instance, was drafted in 2005 and wasn’t a reliably good player until 2011—six years later. Eric Hosmer was drafted in 2008 and wasn’t a reliably good player until 2013—five years later. Even Bobby Witt Jr., who is the best Royals player since George Brett, was drafted in 2019 and didn’t become the Witt we all know until 2014—four years later.
So in 2016, the drafts in question that should have been relied upon to provide at least some juice, via a trade or for the Royals themselves, were in 2010, 2011, and 2012. During those drafts, the Royals had nine picks among the top 100 selections and a trio of top-five picks:
- #4 overall in 2010
- #5 overall in 2011
- #5 overall in 2012
- #54 overall in 2010
- #65 overall in 2011
- #66 overall in 2012
- #86 overall in 2010
- #95 overall in 2011
- #100 overall in 2012
We all know what happened there. Per Baseball-Reference, those nine picks resulted in a combined 1.4 career Wins Above Replacement (and I’m generously awarding 0 WAR to the pair of players with negative career WAR). The combined WAR of the three players taken with the very next pick after Kansas City’s first round selections? Well, Drew Pomeranz, Anthony Rendon, and Albert Almora have combined for a career 49.4 WAR.
Why did this matter? Well, players get injured and sometimes trades don’t work out. It was inevitable that the Royals encounter some bad luck and injuries after having a healthy and successful playoff run, and so they did. Unfortunately, by that point the internal well had run dry. Wil Myers and Zack Greinke weren’t there to trade for top-tier talent. There were no more Hosmers or Mike Moustakases on the horizon. Eventually, the Royals figured out what they had in Whit Merrifield (drafted in 2010), but it was too little and too late.
I bring this up for two reasons. One, because even today, folks will say how the Royals struggled because they couldn’t keep the core gang together or because their trades for Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto emptied the farm system. That is demonstrably untrue; the Royals had the 12th overall pick in the 2009 draft and then four consecutive top-ten picks in the next four drafts and didn’t get a single useful player out of any of them. You can’t go broke in the draft for half a decade and expect to continue to win.
The other reason, the main one, is that I worry that the Royals will encounter this issue again.
Think about it: many of the core players on the 2024 playoff team were drafted in the drafts from 2017 through 2019. This includes MJ Melendez in 2017 as well as Brady Singer, Kris Bubic, and Daniel Lynch in 2018 and Witt, Alec Marsh, Michael Massey, and Vinnie Pasquantino in 2019. That tracks with the previous Royals playoff teams, who acquired much of their core between four and seven years before they made the playoffs.
But since 2020, the Royals farm system has gone eerily silent. Asa Lacy, the fourth overall pick from that year, has been plagued by injuries and wildness when he has pitched, and Nick Loftin, the 32nd overall pick that same draft, has demonstrated he doesn’t have the power to be a viable big league player. The Royals lack a single top 100 prospect from either of their 2021 and 2022 drafts. The 2023 draft featured a trio of incredibly risky high school selections. Meanwhile, the 2024 draft is two close to call, and the top pick, Jac Caglianone, posted uninspiring numbers at High-A and in the Arizona Fall League.
These are the draft classes that are going to affect how good the 2025 through 2027 Royals are. Witt is the best player in the American League and on a team-friendly contract terms through those years. The Royals quite literally cannot afford for half a decade’s worth of premium draft picks to be busts like they were the last time they were good, but considering the overall performance of the 2020 through 2022 draft classes so far, they are well on their way to repeating history.
In other words, Kansas City needs someone to step up and step up now. Maybe it’s Caglianone. Maybe it’s Carter Jensen. Maybe it’s Gavin Cross. Some are more likely than others, but regardless, the status quo is going to result in a stalled competitive window eerily similar to last time.
Though, if it gets the Royals another World Series...I’ll take it.