Every Major League Baseball team has some tough choices to make this week, and the Kansas City Royals are no exception.
Tuesday is this year’s deadline to add eligible prospects to the 40-man roster to protect them from being selected in the Rule 5 draft, which takes place next month at the winter meetings. The Royals’ 40-man roster currently sits at 37, so they in theory have three free spaces, and could designate players for assignment if they really want to create more.
It seems unfathomable that under those parameters, they might not have room for a recent first-round pick. But that just might be the case, as a pair of top prospect analysts explained on Sunday.
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Will Royals protect Gavin Cross in Rule 5 Draft?
Mar 21, 2024; Surprise, Arizona, USA; Kansas City Royals designated hitter Gavin Cross against the Chicago White Sox during a spring training baseball game at Surprise Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jonathan Mayo and Jim Callis of MLB.com recently chose every team’s “toughest Rule 5 decision,” and for the Royals, they chose outfielder Gavin Cross, who has fallen down the team’s top prospect lists after he was chosen out of Virginia Tech in the first round back in 2022.
“This isn’t what the Royals had in mind when they took Cross with the No. 9 overall pick in the 2022 Draft,” wrote Callis and Mayo. “He spent his second straight year at Double-A and has a career .747 OPS to go along with a strikeout rate around 26 percent. It remains to be seen whether his hot July and August this past year (.301/.370/.528) provided enough hope to earn him a roster spot.”
The Royals gave Cross a full-slot signing bonus of $5.2 million three summers ago, and when a team invests that heavily in a prospect, they’re usually willing to give them every chance to at least make their major league debut before giving up on them altogether.
But the Royals also haven’t yet expressed much, if any confidence, that Cross can become a big-league regular. He should be banging down the door for playing time with how weak Kansas City’s outfield depth chart is these days, yet no one in their right mind would have suggested he was ready for a call-up this year.
Still, Cross left a strong last impression at the end of the year, and teams want to believe in their own former first-rounders. If we’re going to guess, it seems like Cross getting protected is a better bet than not.
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