​Anne Rogers of MLB.com shared insights into how the Kansas City Royals are approaching the draft this week, including conversations with scouting director Brian Bridges. The Royals have been tied to a collection of prospects, such as shortstop Jacob Lombard from Gulliver Prep in Florida—assuming he remains available—left-hander Gio Rojas from Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, outfielder Eric Booth Jr. from Oak Grove High School in Florida, UC Santa Barbara right-hander Jackson Flora, and Georgia Tech outfielder Drew Burress, among others. There’s also a possibility they could surprise people by selecting Huntington Beach, California, standout Jacob Grindlinger, a 17-year-old reclassified for this draft who profiles as a potential two-way player with notable upside. Grindlinger sits at No. 16 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 250 Draft Prospects list and has been climbing boards as Draft day approaches.
In general, prep players carry high upside but come with more risk, while college players typically offer a higher floor and more immediate experience, often with a quicker path to the major leagues. Across the entire Draft, the Royals intend to value both paths. Bridges noted, “There’s a good mix of high school and college. To tell you the truth, our range is pretty broad. There’s a clear-cut four players, five players in this Draft, and then, believe it or not, where we’re picking, you can go a number of different directions. So we have a pretty good balance of what we’re looking at, both high school and college.”
Baseball America, by contrast, has painted a murkier picture of Kansas City’s strategy, reporting a divide between ownership and the scouting department. For a more contemporary snapshot, listen around the 44:00 mark of their latest update. In other Royals coverage, Yirsandy Rodríguez of Royals Keep discusses Noah Cameron’s curveball, arguing that it “isn’t enough anymore.” The pitch itself hasn’t changed significantly in velocity, vertical movement, or spin, but hitters’ responses have shifted; they’re no longer chasing it at the same rate. A plausible explanation is that Cameron’s other pitches aren’t sufficiently threatening to keep hitters from sitting on a fastball or waiting for something more hittable.
The rest of Cameron’s repertoire doesn’t consistently complement the curveball. His four-seam fastball has yielded a 49.3% HardHit rate and a .280 batting average against, while the cutter has given up a .338 average, and both the slider and sinker have fared even worse. Taken together, those four pitches make up 61.5% of his repertoire, in contrast to only 16.8% for the curveball. The data suggest that hitters can afford to wait for something more hittable rather than guarding against his best pitch.
Meanwhile, The Athletic’s latest power rankings place the Royals at the bottom, with Cole Ragans emblematic of Kansas City’s 2026 struggles. The sentiment in the intro was that Bobby Witt Jr. has performed well, though even that acknowledgment doesn’t fully capture the team’s current challenges or address broader SEO considerations for their coverage.