Kansas City Royals: Baseball America snubs pitcher Kris Bubic

Baseball America released their updated Top 100 prospects but Kansas City Royals pitcher Kris Bubic was left off the list.

Baseball America has been busy with its year-end rankings for the minor leagues and earlier in the week, they indicated that Kansas City Royals pitching prospect, Daniel Lynch was one of the biggest first-round reaches since 1990. While the case could certainly be made that Lynch is perhaps the best of the bunch from the “fab-five” 2018 pitching prospects, they have again made a crucial error.

They released their Top 100 prospects now that most prospects’ seasons are complete. They have 2019 2nd overall pick Bobby Witt Jr. ranked as the 23rd best prospect (MLB Pipeline has him as the 8th best):

"Witt Jr. is as toolsy as the come, with plus tools across the board outside of his pure hitting ability. If he winds up being an above-average hitter, he has the chance to be a franchise type player. – BA"

Witt slashed 0.262/0.317/0.354 with 2 doubles, 5 triples, one home run and 27 RBI’s in 37 games for the Arizona Royals rookie league. He should start next season at either Single-A Lexington or High-A Wilmington and hopefully can start to tap into the highly regarded power.

Other notable Royals prospects on the Top 100 include Jackson Kowar, who jumped up three spots to 60th overall. Daniel Lynch saw a big increase in ranking, going from 74th to 68th overall. And Brady Singer remained at 88th overall on the list. With the season that Kris Bubic had, it’s almost unreal to leave him off the list. Drafted 40th overall in the 2018 MLB Draft out of Stanford, Bubic led the minors in strikeouts this past season split between both Single-A and High-A.

Additionally, he made 17 starts for High-A Wilmington and finished 6th overall in the Carolina League in strikeouts, trailing only Baltimore Orioles 2017 1st round pick, DL Hall who had the same number of starts as Bubic, but made 2 appearances in relief as well.

Bubic has all the makings of a front-line starter for the big league rotation one day and could potentially sneak his way into MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 list at the beginning of next season. That being said, it’s extremely difficult to ignore his 2.23 ERA in 26 starts this season.