Baseball America Names Four Royals Prospects in Top 100

By Hunter Samuels |

The last major publication to release their top prospects list did just that last night, and Baseball America did so with four Royals prospects in the rankings. Raul Mondesi was once again tabbed as the best prospect in the organization, coming in at number 28. I’m obligated to remind you to not worry too much about Mondesi’s stat line, considering he’s still only 19 years old, and could find himself in Double-A this season.

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Brandon Finnegan was the next man on the list, at 55. Baseball America likely sees his odds of sticking in a rotation a bit higher than other scouting services, since this is the lefty’s highest ranking. Kyle Zimmer was ranked 75th following an injury-plagued 2014, and Sean Manaea rounded out the Royals list at number 81.

Hunter Dozier just missed the top 100 due to concerns over his poor second half, while Miguel Almonte also received some consideration.

Since you should know a bit about these prospects by now, I won’t get into the numbers yet again. But now that we have all of the major rankings, I thought it would be fun to see where each prospect was ranked in each global list. As a reminder, FanGraphs’ list has 200 names, and they’re sorted by tiers, so the actual number of rank isn’t terribly important.

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To see the full lists for each, you can click on each of the following links: Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, FanGraphs, Keith Law (subscription required).

The first thing that stood out to me was that the Royals had a prospect ranked 56th in almost every list. Finnegan was initially ranked 56th in BA’s list, but was bumped up a spot when Yoan Moncada was taken out of the list. That doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s fascinating for no reason in particular.

As mentioned, BA is higher than anyone else on Finnegan, suggesting most are thinking he’ll end up in a late-inning bullpen role. Zimmer is a tough guy to get a read on because he didn’t really pitch last year. Still, as you see from Law, scouts love his stuff, and when he does pitch, he has a ton of potential. It’s just that whole “staying on the mound” thing that’s given him trouble.

Overall, I think the biggest takeaway from these prospect rankings is this: don’t scout a box score.

Among the team’s top prospects, only Finnegan and Manaea had what you would call “good” seasons, statistically. Mondesi, Dozier, and Bonifacio all struggled at the plate. Almonte gave up too many runs. Zimmer was hurt. Regardless of those issues, scouts still see them as contributors at the next level.

It isn’t that the stats don’t matter, but they don’t necessarily tell you as much about a prospect as they do for a big league player. It’s still fun to look at the numbers and say that prospect is doing well, but it’s important not to project too far into the future simply going off of that. I’m still going to look at the numbers. I just won’t be making declarative statements about a prospect without having additional information.

We should start to see some of these prospects as soon as this year, with Finnegan, Almonte, Zimmer, and possibly Manaea and Dozier having opportunities to help the big league club in September. As I’ve said before, the Royals don’t really have any big-time, impact prospects right now, but there is plenty of depth to complement the current roster, hopefully with even more talent on the way.

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