A look back at the Royals’ 2018 draft class, five years later

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1. So one thing I had been hyper critical of with the Royals is their scouting. It really seemed once Lonnie Goldberg was hired, everything went to shit. Now that we have years and years of hindsight, I’m not so sure he (scouting in general) is the problem, per se. I think we can all agree at this point that the major issue is player development. Where that development stalls? I’m not entirely sure, but I really feel like something is happening, or not happening, in AA and it’s stalling development. That’s just an uneducated guess.

   But either way, we’re drafting guys that are all pretty highly rated. I think there’s a concern about “overreach” at times, and I think the Bubba Starling pick was to avoid another Albert Pujols debacle. But Nolan Watson, for example, was a top 36 pick and the Royals drafted him at 33. Ashe Russell was a top 14 pick whom we drafted 21 overall. I mean, it’s not like the Royals are drafting guys who don’t have talent and aren’t projected to be drafted where they were actually drafted.

   So that tells me that the biggest problem is player development. But I also wonder if there’s some disconnect between scouting and PD. Are we drafting guys that don’t fit our system? Should there be more of a symbiotic relationship between the two? Or should there be an expectation that if we draft a player who has universally recognized talent, we should be able to develop them regardless if they match the style our player development team distributes? I genuinely have no idea what that answer is or if it’s even a factor.

   I’m just so dumbfounded as to how regularly we have whiffed on prospects who, at the time of the draft, had upside identified by people outside of the Royals organization. It just makes no sense to me.