KC Royals: Minor League Prospects Have Rough Week

Northwest Arkansas Naturals

The Northwest Arkansas Naturals didn’t post a losing record in their third week of the season but they also didn’t post a winning record. They finished the week 3-3 as they got swept by Midland and won the first three games of the series against Tulsa.

All three of their losses to Midland were by one run and two of the three losses were walk-off losses.

The Naturals have a pair of prospects going in opposite directions at the Double-A level.

Hunter Dozier, the KC Royals’ 15th ranked prospect, is finally doing what he was drafted to do; he’s hitting. On the season, Dozier is 16-47 and has five doubles and four home runs. He’s also add three stolen bases. This week alone he hit two home runs. Here’s what MLB.com has to say about the Royals’ third base prospect:

"His strength and leverage give him enough raw pop to potentially produce 20 homers without swinging for the fences, but it remains to be seen if he can snap out of his year-and-a-half-long funk."

Meanwhile, Bubba Starling is spiraling downward. It’s starting to look more and more like 2015 was an anomaly.

Starling is batting .208 on the season but he does have a .333 on-base percentage. He has struck out 20 times in 48 at-bats. He did see a slight uptick in his numbers this week as he went 6-24, but he also struck out ten times.

Alec Mills and Matthew Strahm continued their impressive starts to the season this week. Mills went six innings and gave up three earned runs. He’s got 17 innings on the season with 19 strikeouts and a 0.76 WHIP. Strahm has 15 strikeouts in 15.1 innings of work and a 0.91 WHIP.

Quietly having a good season on the bump is Andrew Edwards. In 11 innings of work, he’s struck out 14 batters and allowed no earned runs. He has a WHIP of 1.00 on the season.

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