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Originally Posted by SithCeNtZ
I'm going to have to disagree significantly n regards to hitting. Pitching is another thing entirely so I won't go into that here, but hitting we absolutely do.
The Royals have always prioritized defense and athleticism over anything else with picks not high in the first round, of which those players are usually 5 tool guys anyway. Get beyond that and let me tell you the story of nearly every single guy we draft: "good to great defense, athletic, could play multiple positions, could hit for solid average, hope to develop power". And when your strongest traits are defense and athleticism, those generally don't fall off when being promoted. So we promote guys with a nice defensive floor and we just hope they can figure out hitting, which leads to tons and tons of how we talk about Kyle Isabel right now: "well if he could just hit more then..."
The royals best OF Non-high first rounder prospect listed on MLB top 30 is, wait for it, a second round light hitting OF who is called "defense first" player(Roccaforte). I'm shocked. Tylor Gentry who we just called up: "one of the best arms in the system and above average fielder. Needs to find more consistency at the plate". Javier Vaz: "plus runner good defender. Zero power good contact hitter". It goes on and on.
You know what you almost never see? Offense first guys. "This guy can hit but can't defend" guys. Those guys are much more likely to bust in AA because their single skill can be stopped there. And we simply don't draft those kinds of hitters. So we never run out of these fringe guys who play good defense and if you squint you can see a serviceable player. That's why the Royals absolutely have more fringe utility players than other teams and why our minor league system is usually referred to as "deep but lacking star power" aka we have a bunch of possible utility guys who aren't terrible but can't hit enough to be a star most likely.
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A AAAA guy is a AAAA guy. Whether he's a AAAA guy because his bat is a little short, or he's a AAAA guy because he doesn't have a position or he's a AAAA because he has power but strikes out too much or whatever.
The Royals do traditionally target guys who can run and play defense (part of that is the park. You can't exactly play guys in the corners who can't defend - look at how much of a liability Hunter Renfroe looks like). So their guys that don't quite make it fall into more of the same bucket.
I think they've changed up the approach a bit (Caglianone is not the type of player they have drafted in the past), so eventually we'll see the guys who aren't quite good enough change up their approach.