Kansas City Royals Top 35 Prospects

The freakishly talented Caglianone presented a serious conundrum to teams picking atop the 2024 draft. He was perhaps as talented and toolsy a college player as there has been in the last decade or so, wielding elite raw power and, for parts of his career, elite fastball velocity, but Caglianone’s plate discipline and command were both so lacking that they threatened his entire profile on both sides of the ball. He slugged .738 and hit 33 homers as a sophomore, then slashed .419/.544/.875 with 35 bombs in his draft year, but long levers and poor ball/strike recognition (his chase rates approached 40% in college) caused Cags to whiff quite a bit more than his 8.2% junior year strikeout rate might otherwise indicate.

The troubling thing for the rest of the AL Central is that the tweaks and improvements that have allowed Caglianone to go from having hit tool risk coming out of the draft to regularly accessing top-of-the-scale power against Triple-A pitching are of the more modest variety. His hands start lower than before, reducing the size and length of a still-aggressive load, which has served to keep his groundball rate south of 50% even as the Royals search for a promotion that will challenge the sixth overall pick. Caglianone has mostly cut fastball chases above the letters out of his diet, but he’s still over-aggressive (especially with two strikes) such that it’s astounding that he’s flirting with a strikeout rate under 20% while still being relatively new to focusing on hitting full-time.

Caglianone has otherworldly all-fields juice. There are big leaguers who will pop 20 bombs this year and won’t post a max exit velo as big as the 111.6 mph 90th-percentile figure Caglianone posted in the opening month of his first full season. He’s not nearly refined enough in his pitch selection or at the contact point to dismiss the idea of a lengthy big league adjustment period, but there’s 40-homer potential here that’s actualizing really quickly.

Caglianone’s defense is overmatched by the timeline that his bat is driving. He has the straight line speed to get by in an outfield corner, but he has played there very sparingly and runs circuitous routes. First base is more than doable for him, but he’s still a work-in-progress there. Given the prodigious nature of his early minor league production, however, he might just make a strong case for DH reps in Kansas City by the All-Star break or sooner.

Almost four years after he got a little over a million bucks to sign with his hometown Royals out of high school, Jensen is blending good athleticism with above-average raw power and arm strength, while hanging tough against Southern League pitching at age 21. That intriguing mix of tools and zone discipline at catcher is enough to maintain a projection of a solid regular, even if the start of the 2025 season finds his development still working at a slow boil.

Jensen is leaning further into an exaggerated coil and load into his back hip with his swing. His negative move lifts his front foot clear off the ground compared to his previous toe tap, and he hasn’t quite nailed the timing of it nor addressed a vulnerability versus upper third velocity. After 18 homers in 2024, Jensen is struggling to pull and lift fastballs early on this year, dooming him to a sub-.100 ISO despite a 107 mph 90th-percentile exit velocity and precociously low chase rate.

On defense, you can still spot unpolished movements in his blocking and framing, though at an incrementally smaller rate than in previous years. But Jensen’s throwing arm is strong with a compact arm action, and what can be said of his defense can be said of his whole profile: The physical tools are the reason to stay on Jensen even as he trudges the long development path of a high school catcher.

Cameron was drafted in the seventh round of the 2021 draft out of Central Arkansas not long after he had a Tommy John surgery. He had an encouraging 2023, his first full season, despite a 5.28 ERA, as he posted strong peripherals across 107.1 innings (28.3% K%, 7.5% BB%) and reached Double-A. His 2024 and early-2025 performance have been practically identical. Cameron worked 128.2 innings in 2024, and during the second half of the season was stretched out to six or seven innings per outing. This year, he made seven good Triple-A starts and was promoted to the bigs. His delivery is effortless and repeatable, and Cameron commands all four of his pitches, giving him an incredibly high floor as a prospect because he has basically no relief risk.

His best pitch is a changeup in the 80-84 mph range. It’s uncommon for pitchers with Cameron’s nearly perfect vertical arm slot to be able to turn over a changeup from this position, let alone a plus one, but even as he has climbed into the upper levels of the minors, this pitch has been generating plus miss. It succeeds more because of Cameron’s ability to locate it than its pure movement, and it’s also aided by how long he hides the baseball, and how loose and free his arm action is. The vertical nature of Cameron’s arm stroke creates backspinning ride on his fastball. It isn’t a speedy offering — it sits about 92 mph and will peak around 96 — but, again, deception and command season its effectiveness. The combination of his below-average velo and a top-of-the-zone approach to fastball location has made Cameron homer-prone for stretches in the minors, especially in 2023, when he allowed 19 bombs in 107.1 innings, and again so far this year. Seemingly in response to this, he’s upped his cutter usage in 2025, more as a way to stay off barrels than to miss bats.

Cameron also has an 80-84 mph 12-to-6 curveball, the shape of which mirrors that of his fastball. He will manipulate its direction somewhat against lefties to give it a little more of a slider look. The depth of his curveball and the quality of his changeup gives Cameron two ways to tilt with righties and generate whiffs. Against lefties, he becomes heavily reliant on his fastball. This guy is a very stable rotation piece with two plus attributes and two average ones. Though he lacks star-level stuff, Cameron is a stable, polished no. 4 starter prospect.

Mitchell was a great two-way high school prospect in Texas who often competed with, and stood out among, kids who were a year or two older than him at showcase events. He was into the mid-90s on the mound and showed huge left-handed power in the batter’s box for his age. The risk associated with high school catchers is already high, and Mitchell’s profile added more because he did quite a bit of swinging and missing on the pre-draft circuit.

Mitchell’s first full pro season in 2024 reinforced his amateur scouting report. He slashed .238/.376/.439 and hit 18 homers at Low-A Columbia, but he also struck out 30.5% of the time and struggled on defense, especially early in the year. In late February of 2025, during spring training, he broke his right hamate. After being given an initial recovery timeline of four to six weeks, it took twice that before Mitchell started playing rehab games in Arizona. He was shut down again in May with lingering soreness in his hamate and has only played in four official games as of list publication.

Mitchell catches from a such a low one-knee’d crouch that it looks like he’s trying to win a roller skating limbo contest. His hands and technique picking balls in the dirt improved a ton throughout 2024. Next for Mitchell might be getting his arm to play closer to his talent level. He’s a very athletic mover and has a huge arm, and he probably would have been a really good college reliever. But Mitchell only caught runners at a 15% clip in 2024 and allowed 113 stolen bases, often leaving his crouch too late. His defensive improvement over the course of last season is important because his overall ceiling as a player is going to be dictated by how good of a catcher he becomes.

Mitchell’s future at the plate is much more clear. He lacks barrel feel and he’s going to strike out a bunch (his seasonal batting averages might hover around .200), but he can really swing it and is going to have plus lefty power, maybe more. There are outcomes where Mitchell strikes out so much that his career mimics Alex Jackson’s or Zack Collins‘, but if he develops into an at least average defender, then something akin to Tom Murphy or Jarrod Saltalamacchia seems very doable. And Mitchell has plenty of time to develop; his 40-man evaluation year isn’t until 2027.

Avila worked over 100 innings in 2022 and 2023, but in 2024, he missed time with an oblique injury. He still managed to reach Triple-A and picked up enough innings in the Fall League to exceed the threshold once again. Avila pitched well in Arizona and was put on the 40-man roster during the offseason. He broke 2025 camp with Triple-A Omaha.

Avila works with two distinct fastballs, both of which reside in the mid-90s. His four-seamer often has a bit of natural cut, while his two-seamer sinks and tails. The two work together to stay off barrels more than to miss bats. For that, Avila leans on his power, low-80s curveball, which has depth and 1-to-7 shape. Avila more or less ditches his sinker against lefties and works with his de facto cutter/curveball combo 70% of the time, while his upper-80s changeup, which flashes average, touts 14% usage. Avila’s command passes muster for a starter but isn’t exceptional. He had a 12.4% walk rate in 2024 and is hovering around 10% so far in 2025. It caps Avila’s projection more in the no. 4/5 area, whereas on pure stuff, he’s basically a better changeup away from having a mid-rotation ceiling.

One round before Carter Jensen’s hometown Royals lured him out of a commitment to LSU in the 2021 draft, they shelled out $3 million to do the same with Kudrna, a high-waisted and projectable right-hander. Despite impressive work to add strength and develop his lower half, Kudrna has only grown into flashing upper-90s heat rather than sustain it. Further saddled with a steep downhill plane from his high release point, Kudrna’s low-90s four-seamer has been consistently whacked in Double-A, accounting for the bulk of the 98 hits he’s allowed in 83.2 Texas League innings thus far.

Kudrna will pitch this whole season at age 22, and there are frame and athleticism reasons to be enthusiastic about his prospects, especially if he continues to develop his sinker out of his high slot. The right-hander’s 83-88 mph slider also has impressive depth despite raw feel for location. His changeup lacks the velo separation to earn misses when he leaves it in the zone, but he sells it on arm speed well enough to yield chase rates north of 30%. Because there’s still room for velo and command growth, you can squint and see a back-end starter, but the rocky road Kudrna faces to reach fastball playability and the flashes of plus velocity suggest he could pop as a leverage relief arm.

Gonzalez is a super twitchy center field prospect with plus speed and range, and advanced field awareness. He goes full tilt after balls hit into the gaps and over his head, and is adept at locating the wall and warning track and then finding the baseball again. He’ll run 4.2 flat from home to first, and has already had multiple four-steal games in 2025 at Low-A Columbia. Gonzalez’s effort, athleticism, and wheels all point to him being a plus center field defender at maturity.

On offense, Gonzalez has a plus bat-to-ball track record in two years of rookie ball and is off to a similar start in 2025. He has a fairly extreme inside-out approach; he yanks sliders away from him to his pull side and inside-outs a ton of pitches tailing around his knees to right field. There are aspects of Gonzalez’s swing that remind one of Kristian Campbell, including Gonzalez’s knack for finding the barrel even when his swing looks like it requires his entire body to swing hard. He is currently making all-fields singles contact, with the occasional flash of real power. There’s room enough on Gonzalez’s frame for him to develop meaningful power, especially for a premium defender. He has a shot to be an everyday center fielder with an ETA toward the end of this decade.

Arronde has an exciting combination of velocity, projectability, and starter-quality strike-throwing ability for a 22-year-old pitcher, and in 2024, he demonstrated starter’s durability by working over 100 innings at Low-A Columbia. He posted a 2.94 ERA in 110.1 innings last season and began 2025, his 40-man platform year, at High-A Quad Cities.

As his stuff is currently constituted, Arronde is in position to be a strike-throwing backend starter. His fastball’s lack of movement causes it to play down despite its velocity, but if Arronde can get stronger (especially in his lower body) and better explode down the mound, the ceiling on that pitch is pretty big. At 22, it’s not a given that will happen, but Arronde’s wispy build has uncommon late projection for a pitcher his age. His breaking ball would benefit from more power, too. It’s a low-spin 82-84 mph slider that’s generating slightly above-average miss so far this year, but it looks a grade below average to the eye. It has short action for a pitch as slow as it is. Arronde’s best pitch is his promising splitter, which sometimes has slider shape and action. It’s all over the place, but it moves late and it moves a lot, and some of them are 70s on the scouting scale. The Cuban righty is a pretty good bet to be added to the Royals’ 40-man roster after the season and debut in 2027 as a spot starter before rooting into the back of the rotation over as he enters his mid-20s.

Ramirez only began to catch after the Royals signed him in 2023. While his relative inexperience still shows as he enters year three of his conversion, the long-term defensive outlook for Ramirez is very positive. He has special twitch for a catcher, he plays with huge effort, and he is a very natural thrower of the baseball. He can be a little slow out of his crouch, but Ramirez generates monster hip/shoulder separation and has plus raw arm strength. His hands and receiving ability are still very rigid, and he needs technical polish as a ball-blocker, but the athletic ingredients are here for both of those to continue their progression toward a place of viability.

At the plate, Ramirez’s carrying tool is this power. He has a super aggressive, fly ball-oriented approach and posted a 50% hard-hit rate and slightly above-average peak exit velos in 2024. The strength and speed of his hands generates loud pull power, and at peak, Ramirez should have enough juice to be dangerous to right-center field as well. He made a good amount of contact in 2024 but is off to a rocky start in that regard so far in 2025, as his contact rate has dipped six percentage points down to 70% (it’s trending up the last three weeks, though). Slider chase is an emerging issue here, as Ramirez is geared to pull and ends up swinging inside a ton of them. He can have elevated strikeouts and still be a primary catcher so long as he’s getting to power and playing excellent defense.

It’s been a year and a half since the Royals sent righty Taylor Clarke to the Brewers for Devanney and relief prospect Ryan Brady. In that time, Clarke was DFA’d by Milwaukee and returned to the Royals on a minor league deal, while Devanney has pulled off a substantial swing change to start 2025 – his fourth season in Triple-A – and is on a massive power-hitting heater.

Where Devanney’s pre-pitch setup was once a Rube Goldberg machine both above and below the waist, he’s quieted his leg kick, while both setting up and loading his hands closer to his body. The reduced action has correlated with a significant reduction in chase. With above-average bat speed and raw pop, Devanney has been lifting and pulverizing everything soft in the zone to all fields, hitting 11 home runs before Memorial Day. He’s been much more tame against velocity, he still whiffs in the zone more than average, and he looks vulnerable in the up-and-away quadrant in a way that big league arms are bound to probe. But despite his age (28) and pedigree (he signed for just $10,000 out of the 15th round in 2019), Devanney was already looking like a rosterable infield reserve based on his glove. He’s not immune to errors, but his above-average throwing arm frees him up to be aggressive when making plays on the run at the borders of his range. There are times when Devanney makes his throws look harder than they have to be, like that kid on the playground who shoots fadeaway jumpers too often, but he’s a well-made guy with middle infield athleticism.

Shortstop isn’t the easiest place to find playing time in Kansas City, but Devanney has some token experience at second and third with an arm that will easily transfer over. Now that he looks capable of crushing mistakes with an extreme fly ball approach, he could be an even more useful roster band-aid.

A two-way prospect in high school, Charles was the Royals’ last pick in 2022 and signed at the 11th hour after visiting the team’s facility. He’s a physical outlier at a yoked 6-foot-5, and he is an absurdly coordinated defensive player for someone his size. He continues to get reps at both shortstop and third base, and it is not out of the question that he might stick at the former. Charles’ ability to throw from all kinds of odd platforms is impressive, and will probably be more and more necessary as he fills out into his mid-20s. If he can’t stick at short, he projects to be plus at third base.

Some of what Charles is doing at the plate is also pretty amazing. In 2024, he slashed .257/.353/.386 and stole 36 bases in 43 attempts. His swing is fairly awkward looking, but Charles was still able to post an above-average wRC+ at Low-A in 2024 at age 20. He’s so geared to pull that he swings inside a ton of sliders, but the fact that he’s often on time to execute his approach is not normal for a hitter his size. Charles was struggling badly with contact at High-A Quad Cities early this year before he hit the IL with a left wrist sprain. We’re not inclined to draw much from early-season Midwest League stats — it’s miserable playing there in April and early May — but Charles definitely needs to find a way to stay closed against a bigger percentage of these sliders if he’s going to be a good big leaguer. Charles is freaky and hasn’t focused on hitting for all that long. He’s very unlikely to “click” this year, but he deserves a ton of runway for his hit tool to mature and for his frame to add what might be titanic raw power during his prime.

Marte first popped onto the prospect radar in 2023 because of his size and arm strength. He began his 2024 on the complex in Arizona and slowly built up to where he was working three or more innings per outing. He was sent to Low-A Columbia at the end of the year, and he’s back there again to start 2025. Already this year, Marte has broken his personal record for innings in a season and a single game. He’s not a bad strike-thrower considering how little he has pitched as a pro, and his delivery is repeatable for a 21-year-old his size. There are enough strikes here to continue developing Marte as a starter, but not so many that he’s a rotation lock.

Marte’s command and velo might take another step forward with improved conditioning. He has a big, prototypical frame, but he isn’t sinewy and trim. He’s already throwing hard, consistently 92-95 and touching 96-97, with roughly average life and plus extension. Marte’s hard slider/cutter resides in the 84-88 mph range and has variable shape, sometimes bending straight down. This pitch has plus potential, but is currently inconsistent in both direction and quality. Marte’s splitter doesn’t flash quite the same level of bite, but to expect that of a 6-foot-5 guy who entered the season with 80 career innings under his belt would be ridiculous. His feel for locating this power 85-89 mph offering is pretty good, and the pitch is generating plus-plus miss and chase so far in 2025 even though it lacks big sink.

Marte has the rest of 2025 and all of 2026 to show that he has at least three viable pitches and can maintain this kind of fastball velocity for 100 or so innings. The latter piece we may not truly have a sense of for another season and a half. Marte is tracking for a 2027 debut and has a fairly exciting relief fallback if it turns out he can’t start.

Industry word-of-mouth once favored the Padres as suitors for Ricardo, but at some point things changed and he joined the Royals for a bonus just shy of $2.5 million. Ricardo is a classic high-variance switch-hitting shortstop prospect with hit tool question marks, some of which stem from his relative newness to switch-hitting. He didn’t exactly have a scintillating debut, slashing just .213/.330/.366 in the 2024 DSL, but he is off to a better start in the 2025 ACL. Ricardo’s fledgling left-handed swing is long and sometimes out of control, but he swings with exciting verve and bat speed. His bat path tends to cut downward from that side of the dish, and his career groundball rate is a little north of 50% as a result. His righty swing features a little less bat speed, but overall Ricardo is an exciting, high-variance offensive prospect.

Whether Ricardo can stay at shortstop will depend on how big he is at maturity. He’s a bit of a waist-bender, he plays defense with a fairly high center of gravity, and he has been projected to third base here at FanGraphs since before he signed. He has a puncher’s chance to be an everyday infielder five or so seasons from now.

Zobac was a two-way player at Cal who played the outfield and grew from being a once-a-week reliever to a reliable starter between his sophomore and junior years; he was a pitching-only prospect by the time his draft rolled around. In pro ball, Zobac reached Double-A in 2024, his second full season, and amassed 126 innings while posting a 3.03 FIP as basically a two-pitch guy. His 2025 season got off to an uncharacteristically poor start due to struggles with command before he hit the IL with right patella tendinitis. His fastball had diminished ride, and he got burned for three home runs in 7.2 innings while struggling to finish sliders, which all lines up with someone pitching with a compromised lower half even as he held his velocity. Zobac rehabbed in the ACL a few days prior to list publication and sat 93-95 mph, with a harder slider.

His fastball has natural cut and ride, and Zobac tends to command it to the top of the zone, which is a change in his fastball approach from early in his career. His cutter/slider often resides in the 85-89 mph range. It has variable shape (hence the designation), but it lives in consistently effective locations on the glove-side of the plate, usually around the top of the zone. These two pitches are effective in tandem; Zobac’s fastball generated plus miss and chase in 2024, while his slider/cutter was a shade above average. Though his delivery is a little stiff, Zobac is a big, athletic guy and he hasn’t had arm trouble. Just a glance at his pitch grips in his ACL rehab outing makes it seem like he has adopted a kick change, as you’d expect from a fella with a naturally cutting heater. Whether or not this is new, we don’t know. His changeup has historically been pretty bad. Zobca can throw it for strikes, but it lacks movement and tends to get crushed. If he’s indeed working with a new grip, then maybe that pitch will have some late helium. If not, Zobac looks more like a reliable reliever than a starter.

Wolters signed for $2.8 million rather than go to Arizona, where his sister, Ella, has been director of baseball ops for the last couple of years (while still a student). Blake was shut down for the back half of last season due to an innings cap (55.2 IP) and a minor injury. He’s back at Low-A Columbia in 2025 and is struggling to throw strikes.

Wolters’ delivery is not especially graceful, and he lacks touch-and-feel command. His fastball is sitting 93 and playing down due to a lack of movement and command. Recall that at peak (and when he was a 40+ FV prospect), Wolters was sitting 94-97; he was working in the 94-96 mph range early during his start just prior to list publication. His slider is still occasionally nasty and has rare velocity at 85-89 mph, but overall it has performed like an average pitch. The physical components that helped make Wolters a good high school prospect remain, aside from his delivery, which has backed up. Here we have another Royals high school pitching draftee who hasn’t progressed as hoped. Wolters is still young, but at this point, his prospect “value” is more about pedigree than performance.

A Connecticut high schooler and Southern Cal commit, Wyatt was an over-slot third rounder who signed for just under $1.5 million and spent 2024 split between the complex and A-ball, where he’s back to start 2025. Wyatt has starter-quality command of five pitches (his two- and four-seamers are different enough to consider them distinct), none of which are plus. If any of them has a chance to be at peak, it’s Wyatt’s slider, which at its best has late-biting two-plane depth in the 82-86 mph range. Partially because of his three-quarters slot, there are times when Wyatt’s slider doesn’t finish and looks more like a slow cutter. He also has an actual cutter, in the 87-90 mph range, that currently acts as an arm-side way to steal a strike. His upper-80s changeup has more tail than sink and needs to be located precisely to play right now.

Though he’s a little smaller than the typical big league starter, Wyatt is a plus athlete with great touch and feel for east/west command of his fastballs and slider. He usually works with two-seam tail, but he’ll elevate a four-seamer on occasion. It took until late June of last year for Wyatt to build to five innings per start, but he has already reached that mark in 2025. He’s on pace to throw roughly 30 more regular season innings than he did last year, which would put him in the 90-inning range at the end of the season. It’s tough to see huge upside here because of Wyatt’s lack of projection, but for his age, he’s a fairly low-variance prospect with a shot to be a no. 4/5 starter a few years from now.

A Miami commit from a high school south of Pittsburgh, Shields got $2.3 million in the 2024 second round. He’s a pitchability lefty with a three-quarters delivery and advanced breaking ball command. Though he has something approaching prototypical big league starter size at a muscular 6-foot-2, Shields’s frame is relatively mature for his age. He isn’t an especially explosive athlete, and instead is more controlled and balanced. Though at times his arm stroke is ill-timed, Shields’ delivery is graceful and effortless. He has advanced feel for breaking ball location, and his slider has above-average length and two-planed break. Shields has a little less feel for his sinking changeup; many of them cut on him and finish in the dirt too early.

Shields’ fastball has hovered around 90 mph for the last couple of springs. He was 87-92 during his draft spring and has been again to start 2025. Though he’s young and has some size to him, Shields is not the sort of athlete for whom we’re comfortable giving multiple grades of fastball velocity. We see him as more of a low-variance backend starter reliant on his slider command rather than plus stuff. After starting the year in extended spring training and making one Complex League start, Shields was sent to Low-A Columbia two weeks prior to list publication.

Lopez has one of the more projectable builds of any rookie-level prospect at a strapping 6-foot-3 or so. He posted a 77% contact rate in the 2024 DSL, his second tour of that circuit. He is a .274/.365/.422 career hitter in the minors in parts of three rookie ball seasons, and Lopez has a chance to grow into impact power as his wide receiver-esque frame matures. He isn’t an explosive, quick-twitch athlete in center, but his strides eat up a ton of ground. It is more likely that Lopez ends up in right field than in center, but he’s currently splitting his reps between the two.

At his size, DJL’s lever length might eventually be a problem against mature velocity. He’s on time to square a bunch of 91 mph fastballs right now, but his swing is bottom-hand dominant and might be vulnerable down the road. He’s still an exciting, high-variance developmental outfielder with big long-term power ceiling, enough that he might be a good player even if he starts striking out more at the upper levels.

Calcaño is a lanky, projectable, switch-hitting shortstop with a defense-oriented toolset who signed for $1.85 million in January and is about to begin his pro career in the 2025 DSL. A slick defender with very good range, his arm projects to be a fit on the left side of the infield. Calcaño has tracked pitches in games, including at the Future Stars Series and Perfect Game events. He needs to get much, much stronger to have anything resembling big league physicality. He isn’t currently strong enough to replicate his BP swing in games, and he has a long, bottom-hand dominant cut that would limit him to slash-and-dash style of hitting unless there’s progress made in this area. Calcaño’s ceiling is more reasonably that of a utility type.

Beam missed his senior season of high school recovering from TJ, but he still made Tennessee’s rotation as a freshman and held a spot for three years. In his junior season, he worked 102.1 innings but posted a career-worst ERA at 4.22. He signed for a shade over a million bucks after last year’s draft and was shut down for the summer.

Beam has had a bit of a velo spike so far as a pro. His heater averaged 94 mph during his sophomore and junior years, but he’s been sitting in the 94-97 mph range for the bulk of his outings so far in 2025. His fastball plays down due to ineffective shape, but Beam’s nearly seven feet of extension helps to balance that somewhat.

Plus, Beam throws strikes. He lacks precise command, but his delivery is so direct to the plate that he ends up living in the zone a ton. Same as in college, Beam works with a curveball and changeup. He tends to yank his changeup a bit, and it often starts to his glove side and tails back over the plate. Sometimes this works great, and it freezes hitters who give up on those pitches. At other times, it’s hittable in the middle of the zone. Beam’s curveball has 1-to-7 shape and above-average depth, but it doesn’t induce much chase because it’s easy to identify out of his hand. Beam has the look of a fastball-heavy backend starter who could use a pitch with more explicit glove-side movement.

Vaz only played a season and a half at Vanderbilt, and he might have been hidden for even longer had 2021 starting left fielder Cooper Davis not gotten injured. If he had played all three seasons at Vandy (he was a community college transfer) and played often, he likely would have been picked much higher than the 15th round. He has been tracking like Diet Tony Kemp, a second base/left field type with plus contact skills and speed, and such little power that his hit tool plays down some.

Vaz slashed .263/.375/.379 with more walks than strikeouts at Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2024 and, after missing the first few weeks of the season due to fractured fingers, he is back there in 2025. His surface level performance has dipped, which isn’t remotely surprising given that Vaz is coming off that particular injury, but he is still making a plus-plus rate of contact and exhibiting plus plate discipline. A lack of bat speed hinders the quality of his contact, and his hit tool likely won’t play like a 70 in the big leagues even though, to this point, his 8-13% strikeout rate at each minor league level is on that level. The eight homers Vaz hit in 2024 constitutes a career high, and his hard-hit rate (25%) was more than a full standard deviation below the major league average. On defense, Vaz plays a mix of second base and left field. He is roughly average at the keystone but often looks uncomfortable attacking balls hit in front of him out in left. The mix isn’t enough to consider Vaz a premium utility type, but it’s enough defensive versatility for him to be a rosterable part-time player.

After running aground in the Triple-A Omaha rotation as a slider-centric kitchen sink righty last July, Hoffman is now tracking as a single-inning changeup artist and was called up to the big leagues just before list publication. Now working exclusively out of the stretch, the former 12th-rounder has tamed some of the elaborate coiling movement from his stabby, drop-and-drive delivery. Even with his high arm slot, Hoffman’s four-seamer has good carry and gets on hitters with mid-90s velo that can now touch 97 mph in short bursts. But the biggest transformation for the current version of Hoffman is his mean, high-80s changeup, which has significantly more drop than the one he touted out of the rotation, and is driving a 33% strikeout rate over his first two months. The new arsenal has turned Hoffman into a reverse splits guy, especially as he struggles to locate his slider out of what looks like a higher arm slot.

Bowlan debuted in the majors in 2023, but only made three big league appearances between that season and 2024. He began last year as a starter before transitioning to a relief role halfway through the season, at times working two innings per outing. It made sense given the nature of Bowlan’s dwindling options, and it appears as though he’s made a successful move to the ‘pen and will be able to carve out a solid middle-inning role in perpetuity.

Bowlan’s fastball velo is up a bit in relief; he’s sitting 95 while touching 98. He was generating huge miss with his heater at Omaha before his recent call-up. The same is true of his mid-80s slider, which Bowlan is commanding with the consistency of a guy with a starter’s pedigree. Those two pitches give him a pretty standard middle relief look, and Bowlan’s upper-80s changeup (it’s not all that nasty, but he locates it well) keeps lefties honest.

Guerrero’s college career began at Lower Columbia Community College before he transferred to Washington for his draft-eligible sophomore season. After he was limited by injuries early in his pro career, he was great in 2023 and 2024, working 123 innings of 4.54 ERA ball in the latter and finishing at Triple-A Omaha. Guerrero has a plus lefty breaking ball, and his fastball is sneaky because of its uphill angle and the deception created by his short arm stroke. Lacking typical starter’s size and a quality third pitch, he is more likely to be a good lefty reliever.

It seemed plausible that Guerrero could debut late in 2025 and then compete for a bullpen role next spring (or else be a spot starter), but he blew out in April and is on the full season IL. It will be interesting to see whether the Royals add him to the 40-man this offseason and, if not, whether a team that likes him as a starter will take a shot on picking Guerrero and stashing him on the IL for part of the 2026 season before trying to sneak him through his first year in their org as a reliever.

Hansell began his college career at Wichita State, then went back home to the Phoenix metro for his sophomore (he barely pitched) and junior (mostly bullpen) seasons. After early-2024 success in the Columbia bullpen, Hansell was stretched out and moved into the rotation late in the season. He began 2025 back at Low-A, which on the surface isn’t great for a 23-year-old college draftee, but bear in mind how new to starting Hansell is. He made just five starts in three years of college and six pro starts in 2024 — that’s it. Hansell is so hot right now that he was promoted to High-A Quad Cities the week before list publication.

This is an interesting developmental sleeper with an absolute hammer curveball. Hansell has a monster low-80s 12-to-6 yakker that could be a plus-plus pitch at maturity. He is still developing a mid-80s slider with very distinct shape and velocity, and this pitch should eventually be a real weapon. He’s peaking in the 95-97 range so far this year but is sitting more 92-94. This is where the long-term relief risk (and likelihood) begins to creep into Hansell’s profile. We don’t know whether he’ll be able to sustain this velocity across an actual starter’s load of innings. Next year (Hansell’s 40-man platform season) is the more significant proving ground for that aspect of his profile. Hansell’s changeup is also not good. His curveball may give him a platoon-neutralizing piece if his command of it sharpens, but that’s not a given. There’s also the intrigue of what Hansell would look like if he could access his peak velo band for an inning at a time; a guy sitting 96 with a 70-grade curveball pitches toward the back of most bullpens. Hansell was a nice find and is on his way to being a developmental feather in the Royals’ cap.

Perez is an A-ball reliever (formerly deployed in a swingman/piggyback role) whose fastball has rare cut/sink movement. He has prototypical pitcher size and big league arm speed, generating velocities in the mid-90s. The late sink and cut on Perez’s fastball makes it almost impossible to elevate; he has a 65% groundball rate overall and a 72% rate against just his fastball. The problem for Yeri is that he can’t throw his fastball for strikes; as of list publication, he’s throwing his heater for strikes only 49% of the time (the big league average for all pitch types is 64%).

Perez also has a nasty vertical slider with big depth and late bite, particularly for a pitch that at times is 86-88 mph. Especially if you’re inclined to project on Yeri’s stuff a bit based on his build, age, and capacity for movement, his ceiling is bigger than that of a standard middle reliever’s. But Perez’s command issues — his career walk rates have hovered around 20% at each level and he’s issuing a free pass per inning in 2025 — make him a risky prospect. This is a player who should be put in front of your favorite team’s dev group during Rule 5 prep just in case they think there’s an easy way to help Perez throw strikes.

Rave made his big league debut just a couple of days before list publication, nearly six years after he was drafted. He comes from an athletic family, as his late father played hoops at Illinois Wesleyan and his brother played baseball at Carthage College in Wisconsin. Rave has played parts of four seasons at Triple-A Omaha, and in 2024 turned in a career year with a .259/.346/.470 line and 58 extra-base hits.

Rave is of medium build and is a capable defender in all three outfield spots, above-average in the corners and more in the 45/50-grade area in center. He has roughly average bat speed and is hunting fastballs. So focused on targeting heaters is Rave that he has a tendency to chase many of them above the belt. His splits against mid-90s velo and above are excellent, and he has shown an ability to flatten his bat path and hit heaters up and away from him to left field with power. He has an OPS over 1.000 against fastballs at Triple-A this year, but a .599 against secondary pitches as of the time of his promotion. Expect big league arms to feed Rave a steady diet of softer stuff as a result.

Though he was passed over in last year’s Rule 5 Draft, Rave is an above-replacement player who belongs toward the bottom of a 40-man roster. He’s less toolsy than most true, consistently rosterable fourth and fifth outfielders, but he can provide a defensive upgrade in the corners, pinch-run, bunt, and do enough little things well to have utility when he’s needed for depth purposes.

Cerantola entered his draft year as a potential first round pick because of the quality of his stuff, but he struggled so badly with control that he barely remained part of Mississippi State’s staff and only worked 17.1 innings as a junior. He fell to the fifth round and the Royals tried to develop him as a starter until 2023, when Cerantola began to work out of the bullpen most of the time. He has yo-yo’d between the rotation and relief a couple more times but really began to thrive toward the end of 2024, when he struck out 43 hitters over his final 28 innings of work.

Cerantola’s best pitch is his mid-80s bullet slider, which has plus velocity and depth. It played like an elite pitch in 2024 and has again in the early going of 2025. His 94-ish mph fastball is roughly average and plays down a shade due to his lack of command. If his command ever levels up, then Cerantols might be able to leverage his special slider into a meaningful late-inning role. He currently has a middle-inning projection.

The seventh overall pick in the 2021 draft, Mozzicato has now been in pro ball for nearly half a decade, but he’s developed neither more velocity nor better command. He continues to sit 89-92, and he was walking 15% of opponents before he was promoted to Double-A the week before list publication. Mozz’s heater averages nearly 20 inches of vertical movement, but he doesn’t have the command to weaponize it. His stabby arm stroke is long and tough to repeat, and Mozzicato has thrown a below-average rate of strikes with his fastball for each of the last couple of years. There is still likely big league utility here because Mozzicato’s secondary stuff is pretty good, especially his curveball, which (along with his unrealized physical projection) was the reason he was viewed as a first round high school prospect way back when. It’s a sharp, late-breaking 11-to-5 offering with knee-buckling depth at its best. Mozzicato only finds himself ahead in counts often enough to use his changeup 8% of the time, but his feel for locating it is actually pretty good, and it has playable sink and tail.

Does Mozzicato have extra gear of physicality in the tank? He hasn’t gotten any stronger since high school and remains rail thin. His fastball would have more margin for error if it were harder; he could have fringe command and still get by with all that ride if he were sitting 94. For now, he looks like an inefficient depth starter or breaking ball-reliant lefty specialist. Five years is long enough to stop checking your watch for your mid-rotation buddy to show up.

Williams was a third round pick after Tommy John wiped out his junior season at Duke, and now almost three years later, he’s still waiting on a return of the velo spike that drove so much optimism about him before the surgery. Without it, his softer skills lack the impact to hold off a move to the bullpen in search of more zip. The lanky right-hander’s lower half’s movement is more concise than his arm action, requiring sharp timing for the two to be in sync. This struggle is felt acutely when he throws his four-seamer, the downhill plane of which requires it to stay above the letters to avoid damage, and his changeup, a promising pitch save for when it stays elevated, which is often. It’s a control-over-command profile, but Williams has admirably shaved his walk rates in half from the double-digit marks that marred his first season of pro ball. That buoys confidence he can avoid bigger blowups with stuff that still requires projection to have impact in relief.

After three years of struggling with control (and, last season, injury), Panzini was moved to the bullpen after he returned from the IL in the middle of 2024. He’s been working in a swingman/piggyback role at Quad Cities so far in 2025 and is having a career-best season. His strikeout rate is just shy of 30%, while his walk rate is in the single digits for the first time.

Panzini is still working four-plus innings in most of his outings, even when he comes out of the bullpen, and he could conceivably transition back to starting full-time. His repertoire, however, has not really been fleshed out. He is a fastball/curveball merchant whose slider shape is basically the same as his curveball. The good news is that Panzini’s fastball (which has 20 inches of vert and at times a little bit of natural cut) and curveball (12-to-6 shape that mirrors his heater) are playing like above-average pitches, giving him the projection of a middle reliever, especially if he finds more velo in a single-inning role.

Colleran is a pure relief prospect with upper-90s arm strength and little else at the moment. He missed what would have been his sophomore year at Northeastern due to TJ, and then began his junior year as a starter, but got shelled and was shifted to the ‘pen. Colleran was still only 20 years old on draft day 2024 and signed for a little less than a quarter million dollars. He began his first full pro season in the bullpen at Low-A Columbia, where he has been working with plus-plus velocity but isn’t dominating. Colleran’s slider has terse, cutter-y movement and lacks depth. Once in a blue moon, he’ll show you a good changeup, but his feel for locating it anywhere near the zone is crude. He’s an arm strength dev project with relief-only projection.

Causey began his college career at Jacksonville State before transferring to Tennessee for his junior season. He has the look of a quick-moving, low-slot righty reliever. Both Causey’s changeup and slider are playing like plus-plus pitches at High-A Quad Cities. Though they’re not likely to continue at that level of dominance, his changeup is truly nasty and has huge tailing action and sink in the low-80s. His slider lives off of deception and command rather than pure stuff, though its uphill angle is difficult for hitters to parse. There are two viable secondary pitches here, including one that can neutralize lefties, which is rare for a sidearmer. Causey is pitching well in long relief at QC and projects to play a low-leverage, middle-inning role a couple of years from now.

Langevin hasn’t yet pitched in a pro game due to a shoulder injury. He was a Canadian high schooler, then a two-season JUCO guy at Wabash Valley in Illinois before transferring to University of Louisiana-Lafayette for his draft year. He threw 80% fastballs in 2024, humming along at 94-97 in a relief capacity and generating a whopping 40% miss rate on his heater from its rise/run action. His changeup’s tail gives it bat-missing potential, but his slider is very inconsistent (and if it’s consistent, it’s consistently bad), though it flashes once in a long while. That said, he hasn’t thrown it much. Langevin needs to find a second good pitch to work out of a big league bullpen.

Murdock is a lean, high-waisted 6-foot-8 right-hander who transitioned to a relief role in 2023. Murdock’s velocity leapt into a range that he had only previously peaked in, and he’s sat 94-97 mph each of the last two seasons, but he also posted unsightly walk rates above 15%. He has long been of note because of his size and stuff, but he’s dealt with several injuries and inconsistent performance. Murdock throws from a three-quarters slot that produces above-average movement on his sinker when he’s working it down in the zone. He throws both a slider (81-85 mph) and a cutter (87-90 mph), which often share a similar short shape but come in at different velocities. The slider also flashes hard, two-plane depth when he stays on top of it. The Athletics, who have targeted wild pitchers with huge stuff before (Ryan Cusick, Joe Boyle, Will Klein), made Murdock a Rule 5 pick, but he struggled across 17 big league innings and was returned to the Royals a few weeks before list publication.