I always share a Royals Top Prospects list for the upcoming season every offseason. I started doing this in 2020, which means I am beginning my sixth year of this “Royals Prospects to Watch” series on this blog.

By no means am I a “prospect expert.” I would defer to guys like Jared Perkins of Just Baseball/Royals Review and Preston Farr of Farm to Fountains, who know this Royals system inside and out and do a lot of other prospect coverage outside the Kansas City organization.

That said, there is a group of prospects every season I think Royals fans should be excited about and pay attention to during the season, and I enjoy writing about those reasons why before Spring Training starts. Royals fans can watch every full-season affiliate through MLB.TV, so that has increased my attention to Royals prospects since I can watch games without needing another subscription.

I will write four posts about the Royals prospects who should be on fans’ radar for the 2025 season. Here’s how the breakdown will go, in order of projected publication date (which should begin this week).

• Honorable Mentions (10)
• 30-21
• 20-11
• 10-1

I will keep the blurbs short and write a few sentences about each prospect in their respective “report.” I will also share the following six metrics for each hitter or pitcher prospect, as I think these stats should give a proper perspective on how they did in 2024 at their respective levels.

• Hitters: Average, HR, R, RBI, SB, BB/K
• Pitchers: W, K, SV, ERA, WHIP, K/BB

Fantasy baseball players may have noticed that the first five categories are traditional scoring categories in 5×5 formats. Even though there are “flaws” with each metric, I believe that from a fan perspective, those metrics give good context on overall performance and possible outlook in the future. After all, if they can be used for fantasy baseball evaluation, why can’t they be used for prospect statistical purposes?

The sixth metric is the BB/K ratio for hitters and the K/BB ratio for pitchers.

When I first started reading about prospect coverage around 2009, John Sickels of Minor League Ball (currently inactive) was a consistent read for me. I also bought and studied the Minor League Baseball Analyst, produced by Baseball HQ and the Forecaster team. Both were prominent advocates of paying attention to BB/K and K/BB ratios as quick indicators for either plate discipline or pitcher command. Since those are crucial traits in player development, I thought including those metrics and the 5×5 roto categories would be essential.

I know there are better ways to evaluate Minor League players.

Video and more advanced metrics (contact and swinging-strike percentages are now available for all Fangraphs for Minor League players) have made the “fan scouting” process more manageable. In addition, there are scouts out there who watch Minor League Baseball full-time, and they deserve more attention from baseball fans who are genuinely passionate and curious about prospect coverage.

Conversely, as a Royals fan who watches and follows the team religiously, I think 40 prospects in the Royals’ farm system should be known among the general fanbase.

That is the purpose of this series: to shed some light on those players and why Royals fans should be hopeful about their outlooks in 2025 and beyond. It also should give fans an idea of who to pay attention to when watching a Royals affiliate on MLB.TV when the Royals have an off day.

When the series is finished, I will share a complete list of my “Top 30 Royals Prospects” for 2025 and the ten honorable mentions via a Google Sheet. Feel free to look at lists of previous years and breakdowns on the home page under the “Royals Prospects Lists” tab.

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