Kansas City Royals: What to expect in the 2019 MLB Draft

On Monday, June 3rd, Major League Baseball will hold its 55th annual amateur draft. In it, the Kansas City Royals have the number two overall draft pick, drafting behind only the Baltimore Orioles.

This is the highest the Kansas City Royals have selected since taking Mike Moustakas second overall back in 2007.

Last draft, the Royals went heavy on college players, especially pitchers. Starting with right-handed starting pitcher Brady Singer out of the University of Florida, the Royals used all of their first five selections, and eight of their first ten selections, on college pitchers.

For more insight into what the Kansas City Royals will (or should) do in this year’s draft, I reached out to Burke Granger, the Assistant Director, Amateur Scouting of 2080 Baseball, an indispensable baseball website that I’ve referred to in multiple articles when writing about the upcoming draft as well as minor league prospects.

This is an almost guarantee: at least the top of this year’s draft will be far different for the Royals than in 2018. Instead of focusing on college arms, expect the Royals to take the best available prospect at number two.

Who that might be, though, is in the eye of the beholder. It seems almost certain that the Orioles, with the first pick, will select Oregon State catcher Adley Rutschman.

That leaves the Royals a good problem: picking the next best player among a bevy of enticing players, both from high school and from college. And if Baltimore for some reason passes on Rutschman, surely Kansas City will pounce on him. Whomever the Royals select should become another key piece to the team’s young core alongside the likes of Adalberto Mondesi, Brad Keller, and Hunter Dozier.

In early April, I wrote an article listing seven players the Royals could take with the second overall pick. One of those players, pitcher Carter Stewart, shocked the baseball world earlier this week when he signed with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of Nippon Professional Baseball, which is in Japan.

So cross him off the list.

The other six remain there for the taking.

Now, on to the six questions (in bold) I posed to Granger about what to expect from the Royals in the 2019 First-Year Player Draft, along with his accompanying responses.