Kansas City Royals: Brewer Hicklen accomplishes rare feat

Ranked as the Kansas City Royals 15th best prospect, Brewer Hicklen managed to top his two-homer game with a three-homer game on Thursday.

It feels like all the news lately regarding the Kansas City Royals is coming from their farm system. Given how the big league team has played this year, it’s not a surprise either. Royals fans should be excited for the future despite a lousy 2019 season. They’ve done well drafting prospects and 2017 7th round draft pick, Brewer Hicklen, has continued to prove that.

Hicklen, 23, played his collegiate ball at a relatively unknown school, at least one that recognized as a baseball school. Nonetheless, Alabama-Birmingham was happy to have him as he slashed 0.328/0.422/0.586 with 8 home runs and 31 RBI’s in his final season on campus. It’s often difficult to gauge what you’re getting in really anything past the first couple of rounds but Hicklen has stood out this season.

He has spent the entire year with High-A Wilmington and has slashed 0.271/0.376/0.446 with 14 home runs and 48 RBI’s in 117 games. This coming on the heels of an 18 home run and 68 RBI season split betwen Single-A Lexington and a late season promotion to High-A.

On Wednesday evening, Hicklen smacked his 10th and 11th home runs of the season which is pretty hard to duplicate, but he was able to top that the following night. Hicklen smacked his 12th, 13th, and 14th home runs on Thursday evening against the Salem Red Sox.

Hicklen is currently ranked as the team’s 15th best prospect and should get a nice boost in the offseason in his ranking. He certainly has the potential to crack MLB’s Top 100 as well. MLB Pipeline projects him to be ready by 2021, which seems appropriate as everyone else will be too.

The thing that most people will notice about Hicklen is that he is a power hitter but he is also extremely dangerous on the base paths. On the year, he has 38 swiped bags, which is tops in the Carolina League. For reference, the next closest is 29 stolen bases by Tennessee Smokies’ Zach Davis, who is not a legitimate home run threat.

As far as the big league roster is concerned, the team seems to prefer moving Jorge Soler to left field at some point. Nobody has emerged from the pack yet as being the next in line for holding down an outfield spot at Kauffman Stadium, so Hicklen could find his way into the big league sooner rather than later if he proves that’s ready.