{"id":2487108,"date":"2026-07-03T21:45:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2487108"},"modified":"2026-07-03T21:45:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:45:29","slug":"analyst-sets-stage-for-royals-to-draft-first-pitcher-off-the-board-with-pick-no-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/analyst-sets-stage-for-royals-to-draft-first-pitcher-off-the-board-with-pick-no-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyst sets stage for Royals to draft first pitcher off the board with pick No. 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Analyst sets stage for Royals to draft first pitcher off the board with pick No. 6<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you are a Kansas City Royals<\/a> fan, this season has not turned out how you would have liked. And while there is still some time to turn things around, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope.<\/p>\n

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Going into Friday’s games, the Royals sit in last place in the American League Central with their 35-53 record and sit 11 games behind the division-leading Chicago White Sox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For fans looking for something to look forward to, they may have to turn their attention to the MLB Draft, which takes place next weekend in Philadelphia<\/a>, and the Royals will be picking sixth overall in the first round.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0<\/strong>Royals sign recently released Athletics reliever with 6.48 ERA<\/a><\/p>\n

Analyst sets stage for Royals to draft first pitcher off the board with pick No. 6<\/h2>\n

The Royals held the No. 6 pick back in 2024 when they selected Jac Caglianone<\/a>. He fast-tracked through the minor leagues and is already with the big-league club, so the front office would love to hit on another early first-round pick.<\/p>\n

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They will have a handful of players to choose from and will need to have a few options in mind just in case there are any surprises before them.<\/p>\n

However, MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo<\/a> believes they are in the perfect spot to take the first arm off the board, UC Santa Barbara’s ace, Jackson Flora.<\/p>\n

“If the Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> take Flora, then the Royals could opt to nap [Eric] Booth. But they really like the Santa Barbara ace in this spot. This could be the first team to consider a high school arm — Gio Rojas — and, never afraid to go ‘off the board’ a little, they could consider reclassified high schooler Jared Grindlinger, and let him start his career as a two-way player.”<\/p>\n

Flora has been dominant, and that continued this year. He’s a true top-of-the-line arm that could be a frontline starter for the Royals sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

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But Mayo also has some backup options if Flora is taken before them, like taking a chance on prep arm Gio Rojas, grabbing prep outfielder Eric Booth Jr., or taking a gamble on two-way prep star Jared Grindlinger.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Analyst sets stage for Royals to draft first pitcher off the board with pick No. 6 originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here. If you are a Kansas City Royals fan, this season has not turned out how you would have liked. And while there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2386854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[432498,316608,279830,489746,43627,305643,346980],"class_list":["post-2487108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-american-league-central","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-jac-caglianone","tag-jonathan-mayo","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-philadelphia","tag-pittsburgh-pirates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Royals-stellar-starting-rotation-is-being-wasted-by-a-shaky.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2487108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487109,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487108\/revisions\/2487109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2386854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}