KC Royals have to get second overall pick right in 2019 MLB Draft

The only true benefit to the KC Royals finishing last year as the second worst team in the entire league is that they now hold the second overall pick in the 2019 MLB Draft. The Royals can’t mess up this pick.

When looking back at what made the 2014 and 2015 Kansas City Royals teams so great, drafting was key. Yes, the Royals made key trades when they had to, but a lot of the key contributors had been drafted by the organization and all played together in the minors, which bonded them at a young age.

The Royals haven’t had much luck with drafting recently and that could hurt their chances at replicating that initial rebuild’s success. For awhile, Eric Hosmer was the last GOOD pick by the organization and he was taken third overall in 2008.

Hosmer ended up being a great pick, but after him it looked bleak. That is until Hunter Dozier, the eighth overall pick in 2013, showed he was worthy of that pick. Dozier has been outstanding in 2019, batting over .300 and showing he could be a mainstay in the lineup in the coming years. Prior to this year though, Dozier looked like another disappointing selection in the first round.

Since Dozier, however, here are the first round selections by the Royals (omitting 2017 and 2018 since those are still very recent and the team didn’t have a first round pick in 2016):

• Sean Manaea (Traded to Oakland in exchange for Ben Zobrist) – 2013
• Brandon Finnegan (Traded to Cincinnati in exchange for Johnny Cueto) – 2014
• Foster Griffin – 2014
• Chase Vallot – 2014
• Ashe Russell – 2015
• Nolan Watson – 2015

As noted, Manaea and Finnegan were traded in the 2015 season and those trades ended up paying off, as both Zobrist and Cueto played key roles in getting the Royals their World Series title that year. Not to mention these two drafted players haven’t had great careers to this point. Manaea is often injured and Finnegan was DFA’d by the Reds a month ago.

As for the other four names, they’re not exactly living up to the hype.

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Griffin has a 4.97 ERA in Triple-A Omaha, Vallot is in Lexington with a .209 batting average, Russell hasn’t pitched a meaningful minor league game since 2016 and actually quit for awhile, and Watson is actually doing well. He has a 2.09 ERA in Wilmington, but has only thrown 4.2 innings so far this year.

Not only are these names not doing well, but the Royals struck out with their picks from Hosmer until Dozier. Aaron Crow (2009), Christian Colon (2010), Bubba Starling (2011), and Kyle Zimmer (2012) were not good selections. Yes, Colon had some big moments, but we can all admit he shouldn’t have been the fourth overall pick in 2010.

Starling has yet to make it to the majors and while his time could be coming in 2019, it took eight years for him to get to that point. He and Zimmer were both drafted with the hopes that they could help the Royals during those World Series seasons and neither sniffed the majors until 2019.

Speaking of Zimmer, he briefly spent time in the bigs this year, but struggled before being sent back down to Omaha. Simply put – These two picks were not good ones by Dayton Moore and the rest of the front office.

One might think it’s tough to screw up the second overall pick, but the Kansas City Royals’ inability to draft good players in the first round for over a decade now is worrisome for sure. Dayton Moore HAS to get this pick right or it could be another long rebuild in Kansas City.