The Royals recently added their newest draft picks to the organization, so it seems like a good time to look back and how their past draft classes have fared. Five years later, how are their 2021 draftees performing?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Unlike drafts in the NFL and NBA, the MLB Draft isn\u2019t simply a matter of taking the best player available. Every pick in the first ten rounds comes with an assigned slot value, and each club has a capped bonus pool to sign its entire draft class. Teams can pay draft picks the full slot value, or they can allocate the funds in uneven ways with some draft picks getting less than slot value and others getting much more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This strategy is called drafting a player \u201cunderslot.\u201d By selecting a player willing to sign for below the slot value of your first-round pick, a team can free up bonus pool money to spend later in the draft. That extra money can be used to entice hard-to-sign prospects, usually high school players who can use college as leverage if they don\u2019t receive an acceptable offer, to sign for well above the slot value of where they are selected. The strategy can be especially effective in draft classes without a clear-cut top prospect but with considerable depth, allowing teams to spread their resources across multiple high-upside players rather than concentrating them in a single pick. It is similar to the strategy of \u201ctrading down\u201d in other drafts, but since MLB does not allow teams to swap picks, they instead use the underslot strategy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
That was the strategy the Royals employed in 2021 when they had the seventh overall pick. There was no consensus top pick that year, with Louisville catcher Henry Davis, Vanderbilt pitchers Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, high school pitcher Jackson Jobe, and prep infielders Marcelo Mayer, Jordan Lawlar, Khalil Watson, and Brady House among the top names. With no clear dichotomy between tiers, it seemed the Royals were in a good position<\/a> to land a talented player at pick #7.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe beauty of the opportunity we\u2019re in is that there are going to be several options in front of us,\u201d scouting director Lonnie Goldberg said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Leading up to the draft there was a lot of buzz linking the Royals to Rocker, who had wowed scouts pitching for the Commodores in the College World Series. ESPN\u2019s Kiley McDaniel wrote<\/a> Rocker-to-the-Royals was \u201clooking like one of the more likely picks in the mock.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However he had some fluctuations in velocity that spring and his advisor Scott Boras refused to submit Rocker to pre-draft MRI testing<\/a>. Rocker fell to the Mets at #10, and failed to sign after the Mets did not make an offer after his physical. Rocker would be selected by the Rangers third overall the next year and is currently in their starting rotation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Royals were also connected to many of the prep infielders, with Jim Callis at MLB Pipeline writing<\/a> that the team was \u201cbelieved to prefer a hitter.\u201d They were said to be interested in Lawlar and Watson, but the buzz was about House, a prep infielder from Georgia, who Keith Law of The Athletic<\/a> characterized as having \u201csort of been the Royals\u2019 guy.\u201d There was also some buzz the Royals could take infielder Will Taylor, a speedy high school outfielder from South Carolina whom most observers ranked outside the top ten.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The draft got off to a surprising start with the Pirates bypassing Mayer to take Davis, the Louisville catcher. The Rangers snagged Leiter, and the Tigers took a gamble on Jobe. The Red Sox pounced on Mayer, and the Orioles went with an underslot selection by taking Sam Houston State outfielder Colton Cowser. Arizona took Lawlar, leaving the Royals with several options they were connected to, including Rocker, House, and Watson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Royals zagged and took Connecticut high school pitcher Frank Mozzicato, who Baseball America ranked as the #42 prospect in the draft. David Schoenfield at ESPN wrote<\/a> that the selection \u201ccertainly qualifies as the most surprising pick so far.\u201d Mozzicato had pitched in the Northeast, generally not a hotbed of baseball talent, and had avoided national tournaments. His fastball sat in the upper 80s, but scouts were wowed by a plus curve that helped him throw four no-hitters. Ben Badler at Baseball America wrote<\/a> that while it was \u201csurprising to see him go this high,\u201d he loved Mozzicato\u2019s upside and that the lefty had a \u201cton of projection arrows pointing the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n