Happy Spring Training Opening Day! For the first time in over four months, your Boys in Blue will suit up and play baseball against another team. Glenn Sparkman will toe the rubber and throw the first pitch of the Royals spring season as 2019 gets underway.

Here at Royals Farm Report, Marcus has been busy:

First he broke down some signs that will tell us whether or not the “Process” is working.

Obviously, the Wilmington team has a great opportunity to compete for a Carolina League title with basically the entire Lexington group headed there (and probably the addition of Brady Singer, as well). That lineup is going to shove. To think that Rudy Martin and Sebastian Rivero, both very solid prospects, are going to have trouble cracking that lineup is remarkable. And yet, somehow, the rotation will probably be even better. A rotation of Lynch, Kowar, Singer, Carlos Hernandez, and del Rosario doesn’t even seem fair.

Then he did a quick analysis of how Jackson Kowar can do more, by doing less.

Believing that Kowar should develop his curveball into some sort of plus, out pitch reflects what I consider to be an overly simple way of viewing pitching. Not every pitch needs to be an out pitch. In fact, that may not even be useful.

I compared MLB Pipeline’s top 30 Royals prospects to our own and told you why their list is wrong, and ours is better.

1. The Pipeline is finally coming around on MJ Melendez a bit. I still think they undervalue Melendez’ defense and offensive upside a great deal, but at least he’s moving up their list. Good on them.

Drew has been studying the 2015 team, trying to draw parallels to this current core.

Part 1

Part 2

I tried to use history to help set some reasonable expectations for the core prospects heading from Lexington to Wilmington.

Hitters

The goal of this project was to answer a couple of questions:

1. How have past Royals prospects fared compared to their peers when moving up to Wilmington?

2. What can we reasonably expect from this next wave of Royals prospects as they make their move to Wilmington?

Pitchers

What we can do though is try to determine reasonable expectations for the top pitching prospects heading to Wilmington this year. Yefri Del Rosario, Carlos Hernandez, Daniel Lynch, and Jackson Kowar will all be making the jump from Lexington to Wilmington. Let’s take a look at each of their seasons and then compare them with someone who has already made the jump.

 

Photo Credits: PLPhoto2015 (@PPhoto2015)