Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Kansas City Royals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Fallen From Past Lists
Tyler Gentry, OF
Gavin Cross, OF
Daniel Vazquez, SS
Anderson Paulino, RHP
Gentry, at peak, looked like a lefty-mashing corner platoon guy, but he’s struck out at a roughly 30% clip in Triple-A the last two years and is on the 40-man fringe. Cross, a former first rounder, sandwiched a solid 2024 between bad 2023 and 2025 performances. He’s striking out nearly a third of the time at Double-A and has a pretty slow bat. Vazquez, 21, is a fair shortstop defender with below-average offensive tools. Typical utility guys have better gloves than he does. Paulino is a 26-year-old reliever whose fastball has been in the 94-97 mph range for most of the last several years, but it has always played way down and he has a career ERA over 5.00.
Great Deliveries
Logan Martin, RHP
Julio Rosario, RHP
Jordan Woods, LHP
Martin was a 2023 12th rounder out of Kentucky who is currently in the High-A rotation. He has a gorgeous delivery and a build in the Jason Marquis mold. His fastball sits 92-96, he has a 45-grade slider, and it’s possible his changeup will take a late leap because his arm action is so slick. Rosario is a 22-year-old A-ball reliever who sits 91 but has a good slider and changeup. Woods, 21, is a projectable Canadian southpaw who signed as an undrafted free agent in 2022. His 6-foot-3 frame and curveball feel made him a good sleeper coming out of TJ. He hasn’t progressed from a velo standpoint and is still sitting 88 at Columbia.
2025 Signees
Ramcell Medina, SS
Moises Marchán, C
Kendry Chourio, RHP
Medina is a twitchy shortstop prospect with above-average bat speed and precocious pull power. Elements of his swing look like that of Miguel Andujar, geared to pull in such a way that he makes concessions on the outer third. He’s an exciting DSL prospect to monitor in 2025. Marchán is a sinewy catching prospect with a huge arm. Chourio is a fairly undersized righty with a good curveball whose fastball will creep into the mid-90s.
Surprise Royals
Jhonayker Ugarte, 3B
Darison Garcia, INF
Kyle DeGroat, RHP
Sthiven Benitez, RHP
Ugarte signed for $1.4 million in 2023 as a well-rounded third base prospect. He isn’t tracking pitches at all in Arizona and looks like a high-risk prospect due to a lack of contact ability. Garcia is a projectable ACL infielder with advanced feel for contact but below-average bat speed. DeGroat signed for just shy of $350,000 in the 2024 14th round rather than go to Texas. He’s a 6-foot-1 righty with a drop-and-drive delivery, a low-90s fastball, and the makings of an above-average breaking ball. Benitez is one of the harder-throwing complex-level arms, sitting 94-97 in relief. He’s wild and has a career WHIP well over 2.00, but he’s a 6-foot-3 20-year-old with huge arm speed, and he needs to be monitored in case he ever corals his velocity.
Depth-Type Southpaws
Hunter Owen, LHP
Hunter Patteson, LHP
Dash Albus, LHP
Jacob Widener, LHP
Chazz Martinez, LHP
Big and beefy with a sky-high left-handed release point, Owen is piling up whiffs with a tight gyro slider. He’s also sitting 91 mph, and his below-average athleticism adds an extra scare factor to his recent bouts of poor control. Patteson was the club’s 2022 fifth rounder out of Central Florida. Now 25, he’s a strike-throwing High-A starter with below-average stuff. Albus is a southpaw reliever who signed for $150,000 out of Abilene Christian in 2024. He only sits 90, but he has a deceptive arm action and commands an above-average slider. He could be a lefty specialist. Widener is a 6-foot-7 sidearmer from Oral Roberts who is fresh off elbow surgery and rehabbing in Arizona. He has a classic LOOGY look — low-90s fastball, big sweeping slider — but on an XXL frame. A former two-way player in college who legit banged as a 19-year-old in the West Coast League, Martinez transferred to Oklahoma for his draft year in 2022. He parlayed solid work as the Sooners’ swingman into a $125,000 bonus as a Day Three pick, and is pitching his way toward being protected on the 40-man this December thanks to a command leap. Granted, it’s not a huge command leap. But opposing hitters often whiff — 30% of the time in-zone — against Martinez’s super-runny, low-90s cross-fire heater, setting up his slider and changeup to play up when he keeps them on the same tunnel. This looks like a funky medium-leverage lefty specialist profile if the strike-throwing holds.
Righty Relievers
Brandon Johnson, RHP
Beck Way, RHP
Jacob Wallace, RHP
Johnson is the former Ole Miss closer (not the current mayor of Chicago) and pairs below-average size with average velocity on a four-seamer that has an intense downhill plane. The raw ingredients and athleticism aren’t exciting, but Double-A hitters aren’t squaring up his heater, and his mid-80s gyro slider plays great out of his axe-throwing arm slot. Part of the three-player return from the mid-2022 trade that sent Andrew Benintendi to the Yankees, Way’s east-west arsenal out of low-three-quarters slot makes him a tough hang for righty hitters, but his poor control has been unpalatable for three years running now. Wallace’s velocity is down a tad in 2025, but at peak, he’ll show you 94-97 with a plus slider and erratic command.
Long-Term Dev Bats
Derlin Figueroa, 3B/1B
Hyungchan Um, C
Figueroa was a rookie ball acquisition in the Ryan Yarbrough trade with the Dodgers in 2023. The 21-year-old lefty-hitting Dominican infielder is repeating Low-A to start 2025. He has a big arm, but inaccuracy and (potentially) a lack of range threaten a full-time first base move, and there isn’t quite enough offense here to support that. Um is a developmental 21-year-old Korean catcher with average power projection and a risky hit tool.
System Overview
This is a below-average system with one big fish at the very top, several high-variance hitters with hit tool risk, and a fair number of pitchers with starter-quality command. The Royals have pumped a ton of draft capital into high school pitching since the pandemic (Ben Hernandez, Frank Mozzicato, Ben Kudrna, Shane Panzini, Blake Wolters, Hiro Wyatt, David Shields, and a few mid-six-figure guys), totaling upwards of $15 million in bonuses, and while several of them are still prospects, none of them has really developed in a significant way. The risky selections of high school catchers might still work out. Blake Mitchell and Carter Jensen have big lefty power for young backstops, a demographic that notoriously takes longer to develop. Any attempts at diversifying risk via college player selections have gone awry because players like Gavin Cross, Asa Lacy, and some other mid-round draftees just haven’t panned out, or don’t look like they’re going to. Noah Cameron is an exception and should be a rotation mainstay for the next half decade.
Amateur talent is the lifeblood of smaller market teams like the Royals, and while they’re more competitive and interesting than they were a couple of years ago, they aren’t getting enough out of the draft to break through and truly contend in any kind of sustainable way. Whether that’s a problem with development, scouting, or draft strategy (why keep feeding a system high school arms when it hasn’t shown it can develop them?), the org needs to change course somewhere in the domestic amateur space.
Internationally, things are more interesting. There’s volatility inherent in that market but the Royals tend to have toolsy, projectable players on their complex, and they tend to get them without putting all of their eggs into one or two baskets. Many of the best international prospects in this system were signed for less than $200,000. Several 6-foot-3 (or bigger) pitchers with good deliveries, athletes with prototypical size and some degree of pitchability, are lurking here. The industry as a whole doesn’t generate many Latin American starters, but there are several potential exceptions in this system.
The Royals are competing for the crown of a mediocre (though improving) division and are in position to be deadline buyers, but they may not have the prospect quality to make a real splash in the trade market. That said, they’ve made meaningful trades during the last year or so (for Jonathan India, Hunter Harvey, and Lucas Erceg) by giving up players like Mason Barnett and Cayden Wallace, and trades of that ilk seem plausible again. But this isn’t a “shark’s teeth” farm system where, when one player departs, another is developed to move into his place. There’s only so much they can do before the cupboard looks pretty bare. Once Cags graduates, this will be one of the bottom couple of systems in baseball.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com