In 2018, the Royals bet heavily on college pitching, and the haul looked like a farm-system reset at the time. They came away with two compensatory picks for the departures of Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer, plus a Competitive Balance Round A selection, which gave them five picks inside the top 60.
They used their first five choices on college pitchers and wound up taking 16 college arms in all among their 23 picks. The first high school player didn’t come until round nine.
Eight years later, only Daniel Lynch IV remains in the organization as a college pitcher from that class. Kris Bubic was traded to the Dodgers a few weeks ago.
Brady Singer, the first-round pick, was dealt in 2024 for Jonathan India. Jonathan Bowlan went to the Phillies last off-season in the Matt Strahm trade.
Jackson Kowar, Austin Cox, and Jonathan Heasley all reached the majors for a bit, but none stuck. The one clear holdover from that draft class is third-rounder Kyle Isbel, now the starting centerfielder.
That kind of cleanup job can make the whole draft look worse than it really was. By this point, only 22 players from the 2018 class have reached 6 or more rWAR in their careers, and the Royals picked three of them.
Tarik Skubal is the obvious miss-or-hit debate piece, but he slid through eight rounds because teams were worried about his health after arm surgery. Among pitchers, Skubal, Logan Gilbert, Drew Rasmussen, and Joe Ryan are the only ones with more career rWAR than Singer.
Gilbert is also one of just three first-round picks - along with Nico Hoerner and Brice Turang - who have topped Singer in career rWAR.
That puts the Royals’ approach in a different frame. It’s easy to stare at five picks in the first 58 selections and dream about what might have been.
But the 2018 class didn’t produce many stars, especially on the mound. Skubal was the lone true pitching star, and even he didn’t really look like one until his velocity jumped after a 2023 surgery and some mechanical tweaks.
The Royals were clearly following a volume strategy: if you want a good pitcher, start with five good pitching prospects and hope one or two survive the grind. And as every team knows, pitching prospects can break your heart. By 2021, Kansas City had built up a respectable group of arms.
The problem was what came next. Injuries, poor performance, a lack of a third pitch, and trouble throwing strikes kept a lot of those pitchers from becoming regular big leaguers.
Even so, the Royals did extract real value. Singer was up and down, but he had some solid seasons as a starter and enough trade value that the club could have used better.
Bubic battled injuries, yet still became an All-Star and a useful reliever during their postseason run. Lynch has had a rough go as a starter, but he’s a valuable reliever now.
Bowlan, meanwhile, is putting together a nice season in Philadelphia after being used as the trade chip to land a former All-Star reliever - another deal that didn’t work out.
Seen in full, the 2018 draft was solid. And it sits right next to what might be the best draft class in franchise history, when the Royals landed Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino, Michael Massey, and Tyler Tolbert in 2019. Witt turned into a superstar, Pasquantino developed into a middle-of-the-order bat, Massey became a productive big leaguer, and Tolbert has been at least interesting as a speed-first player whose bat has shown some promise.
That’s why the bigger question may not be what the Royals did in 2018, but what they did with the value they created. The organization has still struggled to build depth, forcing it to spend heavily in free agency and via trades just to patch holes. The way those assets were used - and the fact that they haven’t been consistently replaced - may say more about where the Royals are now than the decision to go pitcher-heavy eight years ago.
In Other News...
Jac Caglianone's Early Exit Just Put Royals Fans On Edge
Jac Caglianone gave the Royals at least one more positive note before things turned uneasy Wednesday, extending his on-base streak to 17 games before leaving the game in the fifth inning. The official club update said the move came because of right ankle soreness, and Kansas City turned to a pinch hitter in his place as the outfield picture suddenly got more complicated.
For a player who has been giving the lineup a steady presence lately, any midgame exit is enough to raise alarms, especially when the concern involves a lower-body issue. The Royals now have to wait for more clarity on what happened and how much time, if any, Caglianone might miss, leaving the rest of the night to be remembered less for the streak than for the uneasy walk back to the dugout. [Read more 🡒]
Eric Hosmer Opens Up About The Royals Cores Emotional Final Night
The Royals spent much of the 2017 season hanging around the wild-card picture before the year slipped away and ended below .500, but the final game still carried a weight that went beyond the standings. Ned Yost pulled four core players from the 2015 World Series group late in the season finale, and they walked off the field together one last time, a small scene that captured how much of that era was still tied to the same faces.
Eric Hosmer later said on a podcast that the night did not end when the game did. He and Danny Duffy remained in the clubhouse with other players and their families, turning the finale into a kind of reunion as they reminisced and celebrated with a signed bottle of cognac, a fitting touch for a group that knew the chapter was closing even if the broader story was still being written. [Read more 🡒]