After two seasons finishing the year in the World Series, the Kansas City Royals missed the playoffs in 2016. Do they have the reinforcements to make another run in 2017?

An Introduction

Our minor league top 10 series is coordinated by Benjamin Chase, one of our contributors at Call To The Pen.

He has poured over thousands of minor league games over the course of the year via milb.tv along with speaking with a number of team and independent scouts. These lists are based out of those conversations.

Each system will have prospects from 10 to 1, and then finish with one newcomer to the system that is worth keeping an eye on that is not in the top 10 at this time.

Conversations are certainly encouraged in the comments section on each system as we go along!

The Royals have used that elite farm system to fund those two World Series runs, both on the field and through trades

Royals System Review

Three years ago, the discussion was about whether we’d ever seen a minor league system as loaded as the Kansas City Royals had been from 2011-2013. Now, after a multiple year run that saw them fall an improbable Madison Bumgarner run short of back-to-back World Series titles, the team has to do some evaluation of where they are going forward with that crop of players as they begin to hit free agency.

Last offseason, the Royals addressed their first free agent from their big prospects grouping in Alex Gordon, bringing him back on what many in the industry considered a sign of the concession that the Royals knew they had a limited window of time left being competitive before they’d need to retool their roster, as they chose to sign Gordon for less years and more money rather than lock him down for an extended deal.

The Royals have used that elite farm system to fund those two World Series runs, both on the field and through trades, as they’ve seen Sean Manaea, Wil Myers, Brandon Finnegan, Mike Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi, John Lamb, Cody Reed, and Brett Eibner be moved in deals to pursue the playoffs the last three years after being highly rated prospects at some point within the Royals system.

In general, you will always do that trade off, as the saying goes, “flags fly forever”, however, it’s now left the Royals system fairly shallow in high-end talent with many of their current roster due to hit free agency in the next two offseasons and getting far too expensive for a small market team to keep together.

The direction the team takes this season will likely be determined at Memorial Day. If you see the team competing and playing well, they’ll likely stay the course and hope for the system to fill needs to make one more run on the current roster. If they’re falling behind due to poor performance or injury (as was the case in 2016), you could see the Royals put players like Wade Davis, Alcides Escobar, Jason Vargas, Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Danny Duffy on the market, as they are all free agents after 2017, and you could imagine they would see a farm system turnaround akin to the turn around that the Milwaukee Brewers have put together in the last two seasons, but instead doing it over about three months!

Let’s check out the top 10!