Kansas City Royals News: 2018 MLB Draft and trade deadline

Kansas City Royals news currently fixates on the 2018 MLB Draft, but the impending trade deadline is also a major point of discussion.

The 2018 MLB Draft is taking place this week and so far the Kansas City Royals have focused not only on adding pitchers, but adding collegiate players to their ranks rather than high schoolers. On night one of the draft, the Royals drafted five pitchers and all five of them were college ball players.

Those five pitchers were Brady Singer (Florida), Jackson Kowar (Florida), Daniel Lynch (Virginia), Kris Bubic (Stanford), and Jonathan Bowlan (Memphis). Singer and Kowar are teammates and both are currently still pitching for Florida, who continues its run in the college baseball playoffs this weekend.

On the second day of the draft, the Royals added more collegiate players, including outfielders Kyle Isbel and Eric Cole in rounds three and four respectively. Isbel attended UNLV while Cole is a member of the Arkansas Razorbacks, who are still partaking in the college baseball playoffs.

It took until the ninth round for the Royals to draft a non-collegiate player and that lucky prospect was Kevon Jackson out of Queen Creek High School in Arizona. While college players are obviously older and therefore can make it to the big leagues faster, there are definitely perks to taking high school prospects. The Royals are obviously wanting to speed the rebuild up a little by adding all of these collegiate athletes.

As for the other main talking point with the Royals, we still have a ways to go before the trade deadline gets here. The Royals should be big time sellers in this year’s deadline and we can expect guys like Kelvin Herrera, Jon Jay, and Mike Moustakas to be donning other jerseys by the time summer comes to an end.

Here’s what’s trending in Kansas City Royals news throughout FanSided.

Kansas City Royals load up on pitchers with first five draft picks [KC Kingdom]

"Developing drafted pitchers has been an area where the Royals have struggled over the years, so if even just one of these guys pan out, that’d be a big success for this franchise."

Professional predictions of possible trades [Tyler Dierking, Kings of Kauffman]

"The Royals are rebuilding, as everyone should already know, which means any player of value must be traded."

Five players who won’t be traded at the deadline [KC Kingdom]

"We know the Kansas City Royals are going to be selling like crazy this summer to help kickstart their rebuild. That means virtually anyone is on the table to be traded, but not everyone will be an option."

Here are some other Kansas City Royals news tidbits from around the rest of the web.

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Royals stick with college players on day two of the draft [Max Rieper, Royals Review]

2018 MLB Draft Picks: Live Team-by-Team Day 1 Grades and Analysis [Joel Reuter, Bleacher Report]

Meet the Royals’ MLB draft picks: KC takes more college players on Day 2 [Maria Torres, Kansas City Star]

This was an important draft for the Kansas City Royals and they showed that they’re wanting to get the competitive times rolling again by drafting mostly collegiate players in the first two days. The Brady Singer pick seems like a good one and Royals fans will get a good look at what he can do this weekend when he toes the slab for the Gators this weekend in the Super Regionals of the playoffs.

It’d be nice if the Royals could hit on some of their early draft picks and Singer gives the Royals the best chance of seeing that happen. Here’s to hoping these kids can be the next wave of great Kansas City Royals baseball!