Royals top prospect's first AFL home run left yard at eye-popping speed

The Kansas City Royals sent a strong contingent of prospects to the desert for this year's Arizona Fall League action with the Surprise Saguaros.

The group, led by one of the organization’s top prospects in catcher Blake Mitchell, has experienced both highs and lows at the plate. Until recently, Mitchell still lacked the signature moment that his peers Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen enjoyed during last year’s Fall League.

That moment finally arrived Thursday night with a thunderous home run.

Blake Mitchell's first AFL home run was hit in dominant fashion

Mitchell added Surprise’s second run of the first inning with a towering shot to right field, which left the bat at 116.5 MPH. According to Raising Royals, Kansas City’s player development social media presence, that exit velocity would have ranked among the hardest-hit balls of the MLB season, tied for the fifth-hardest overall.

The home run was the highlight of Mitchell’s two-hit, three-RBI performance on Thursday night. The Saguaros went on to defeat the Mesa Solar Sox 7–5, with Mitchell and fellow Royals prospect Daniel Vazquez accounting for four of Surprise’s runs.

Mitchell’s overall Fall League performance hasn’t been poor, as he owns a .720 OPS and an impressive .426 OBP, with a nearly one-to-one walk-to-strikeout ratio. However, after a strong start, his production at the plate cooled off: he has just seven hits in ten games, and Thursday’s homer marked his lone extra-base hit.

The power stroke he displayed in 2024 has yet to fully return in 2025 following a spring training injury and until now, it hadn’t appeared in Arizona either. That’s why Thursday’s performance, and that impressive exit velocity, matter. Ideally, this will be the first of many such home runs but that remains to be seen.

It’s no secret that hitting the ball hard tends to yield better results, something modern baseball data has confirmed time and again.

But it’s encouraging to see Mitchell producing higher-quality contact, as the Texas native has struggled this year with hitting the ball too high or simply popping out in the infield. That’s a developmental point the 2023 first-rounder will need to address in 2026 as he looks to rebound from an injury-hampered 2025 season at High-A Quad Cities.