Baseball America names Royals' budding star as team's prospect of the year

With a West Coast road trip serving as the Kansas City Royals' wrap to the 2025 season, soon the talk will be of after-season accolades and offseason moves, rather than postseason success or paths to proving this team can be a consistent winner.

Most of baseball's minor-league action is over with this season, with some playoff action yet to determine the minor league champions. With that in mind, a prospect's body of work is already on paper or in the spreadsheet and Baseball America determined which players are an organization's Prospect of the Year.

While outfielder Jac Caglianone was once the clear choice, his graduation opened the door for another to step into his shoes. Catcher Carter Jensen did just that in 2025, and has carried that momentum to the major leagues in a big way.

The Royals' Baseball America prospect of the year is a no-brainer

The Kansas City area native is an easy player to root for, whether it be his local ties, time in the Royals organization, or the confidence he carries in the batter's box. He showcased the latter plenty in his time down on the farm this season.

He had career-highs with a 136 wRC+, 20 home runs, and 76 RBI across the Double-A and Triple-A levels. That is a banner year for any player, but doing so in his age-21 season made the production even more exciting. Royals farm director/field coordinator Mitch Maier is confident that Jensen's structure leads to the polished production.

“He’s extremely mature with the way he goes about his business, his routines and his offseasons,” Maier said. “As a young player at a demanding position, it’s really helped him improve on both sides of the baseball. That’s why we’ve seen him advance as quickly as he has.”

That quick advancement saw him start the season in Double-A Northwest Arkansas and reach the big-league club when September began. Jensen has not slowed down at the plate in the slightest.

With a .300/.391/.575 line and 164 wRC+ in his first 64 plate appearances, Jensen doesn't look overwhelmed by MLB competition and is setting a high bar heading into 2026. He is tattooing the ball and still drawing an above-average rate of walks, a combination that Maier says is bar for Jensen's course.

“You’re just seeing the natural development of a young hitter who had a really good feel for the strike zone and a really good feel to hit,” Maier said. “We didn’t want him to get overaggressive and lose what he was really good at, which was controlling the strike zone.”

Royals fans are rightfully excited to see what Jensen can do in the remaining games this season and the years to come. With the question of who will replace Salvador Perez swirling for seemingly years now, Kansas City has a candidate they can (and should) hitch their wagon to.

Jensen's rise from a third round pick in the 2021 MLB Draft to big-league player has been fun to watch, and hopefully 2025 is just the beginning.