KC Royals prospect projected to be 2025 Rookie of the Year candidate

In franchise history, the Kansas City Royals have only had three players win the Rookie of the Year Award. The most recent winner was Angel Berroa in 2003, but now, one of the Royals' top prospects could be in the running to take home the Award, according to a team at MLB.com.

On December 1, MLB.com named left-handed pitcher Noah Cameron — who MLB Pipeline has ranked as Kansas City's 12th ranked prospect — as a 2025 Rookie of the Year candidate for the Royals. Cameron was recently added to the team's 40-man roster in order to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft, which is a clear indicator that the Royals value the pitcher in the organization, and even view him as a possible contributor to the big league team in 2025.

Noah Cameron is the Royals early pick for the AL Rookie of the Year award

Cameron is coming off of his best professional season, where he split the year across the Royals' affiliates in Double-A and Triple-A. His best numbers of 2024 came from July to the end of the season, when he was promoted to the Omaha Storm Chasers and dominated against the higher competition.

Across both minor league levels, Cameron posted an ERA of 3.08 through 128.2 innings pitched and struck out 149 batters. Opposing hitters batted .243 against him, along with a walk rate of just 6.5%.

According to Statcast — which only tracked Cameron's stats from Triple-A so is limited to 54.1 innings — his fastball comes in around 92 mph, and has been his least effective out-getter. Opponents batted .324 and put together a .446 slugging percentage against it. Cameron's cutter came in around 90 mph, but also got slugged with a .444 rate. While it has 26 inches of downward movement, which does trick batters with similar speeds, it's still a raw pitch.

If Cameron can get those going, it would match greatly with his impressive off-speed duo — his changeup and curveball. His changeup averages about 33.8 inches of downward movement and limits batters to just 80.2 mph of exit velocity, .123 batting average, .228 slugging percentage, and a 46.7% whiff rate.

Cameron's curveball has 50.1 inches of downward movement and limited batters to just 83.1 mph of exit velocity. While opponents didn't whiff on this pitch like they did the changeup, it was had a respectable whiff rate of 38.1%. Opposing batters hit .190 and slugged .286 against it.

Overall, the Royals have a very solid up-and-coming southpaw in their farm system. Cameron is coming off a strong year across two levels of the minor leagues and is getting national attention for it, being projected as a possible Rookie of the Year candidate.