One thing I like to do throughout the season but before I write this is check the pulse of what others think about the Royals system. The top end talent is growing, and one person I talked to said that if they hadn’t promoted Jac Caglianone, we’d be talking about the system very differently, which I find kind of interesting. Is one player that big of a difference? Maybe, I guess. But I talked with people from three different teams. One said they have the Royals as a top-12 system. One said they’re probably around 15. And another had them at 21 in their internal rankings but said that they believed it could jump to six or seven by midseason.
Nobody will ever admit it because it’s subconscious, but I do believe that certain teams get bumps for their prospects and certain teams get pushed down. The Royals have a reputation of a bad system, so their prospects have to overcome a natural bias, in my opinion. And that’s okay. Rankings don’t matter. Production matters. But I do think that as they continue to do things the right way, we’ll see that bias shift back in their favor as it was 15 years ago.