2025 Top 25 Royals Prospects
I am not a prospect writer, but I do like to dabble in the best the Royals have to offer on the farm.
Back years ago, I attended a networking event that had a certain former Royals general manager speaking. The Royals were in the midst of their brief heyday and he was talking about how he approaches a deadline when he said something that I’ve never forgotten to this day. He said “prospects, prospects, prospects will get you fired, fired, fired.” At the time, he was talking about trading or not trading prospects to get help at the deadline. And the idea was that there are so many ways a prospect can cause trouble for GM job security. You can get too attached and not make the move to put you over the top. Or you can make that move, not get over the top and that prospect explodes elsewhere.
That’s what’s so fun about prospects, I think. It’s the unknown. They can be anything you want them to be until they prove you right or wrong. The system remains interesting to me. Last year I mentioned how I’d heard from some people that the 1-8 was maybe the worst in baseball but the 9-30 was really good. I got a lot of similar feedback, but this year, the 1-5 is more in the middle of the pack, the 6-9/10 is not on par with most teams and the depth remains very good in this system. I guess that’s a start. It helps to have a big jump from a guy along with the number six overall pick looking like a potential prospect darling.
Here’s how I’m going to do this list. I’m going to write up the top 10 pretty in depth. And then I’m going to dive the next 15 into groups and write about them more as that group than individuals. Some of that is due to length, but some of that is because I don’t follow these prospects as closely as some others so I have less to say about most of the guys who are down the list a bit.
1. Jac Caglianone, 1B
2025 Age: 22
2024 Stats: .241/.302/.388, 96 wRC+, High-A
ETA: 2026
There’s an argument to be made that Caglianone has as much or more power than anyone the Royals have had before. And if he’s not at the top, he’s close enough that you don’t really care because, at some point, there’s plenty and it doesn’t matter. That’s what he does. He hits the ball hard and far. And with some players, the power doesn’t translate to games. It does for Caglianone. And while he chases too much, he still only struck out 20.6 percent of the time in high-A for the Royals after being drafted. It wasn’t quite as strong as his 8.2 percent strikeout rate at Florida, but nobody would have expected it would be. He covers the plate so exceptionally well that he can drive almost any pitch out of the park.