The hitter edition of the Standouts and Stragglers is most definitely going to run shorter than the pitcher edition. Hitters on the Naturals saw much more parity than pitching. The top end of the spectrum was significantly closer to the bottom end. This results in our assessment relying on specific metrics more than overall performance to gauge success and struggles. This also means that the list is a bit shorter for both parties.
With this being said, there was plenty to celebrate at the AA level in 2024. Players managed to produce in ways that hint at their potential, even if they struggled down the line. Stragglers are all sitting around their expected production but perhaps lacked much spark for future improvement. At this level, most players are young enough that you can expect a change in play. Either for better or for worse there are bound to be changes to each of the guys’ games.
Standout: UTL Javier Vaz – 433 AB, .263/.375/.379, 8 HR, 73 BB, 60 K, 118 wRC+
Javier Vaz has been in the system for three years and two full seasons. In those three years, he hasn’t changed much as a hitter. But that hitter has been worth 118 wRC+ or higher per season and owns a career .376 on-base. Is it worrisome that he hasn’t evolved? A tad. This season proves to me that this is his floor at just about any level of baseball. It isn’t exciting stuff, but this in a Garret Hampson-type role is intriguing. If he improves in any way, expect better numbers than these in your leadoff spot. Vaz knocked 32 extra-base hits for the second straight season and can run the bases very well.
Vaz regressed a bit from a stolen base perspective in 2024. He stole 30 last season, only getting caught three times. This year he was caught only three times again but on only 16 stolen bases. Still, there is plenty of expectation to be placed on him as a base runner. In Kauffman, doubles could come very easily for Vaz if he can find the gaps and fly. His speed combined with his .375 OBP from 2024 make it pretty difficult to miss his lack of home run power. His other tools make it even more difficult. He played second base, shortstop, and left field for the Naturals this season which gives him versatility that few prospects have naturally. Furthermore, he has highlight reels in the infield AND outfield.
2024 on paper makes Javier Vaz seem like a guy who stalls at AAA going forward. His set of skills and ability to adapt to new skill levels make him very useful to a team like the Kansas City Royals. Vaz has the best walk tool in the Royals system, barring another season of Blake Mitchell accruing 80+ walks. Even then he struck out 89 times less than Mitchell in 2024. He didn’t swing out of the zone often, he made consistent contact, and he hit the gaps. If he gets his 20.3 infield flyball percentage down that alone will skyrocket his numbers.
Straggler: 2B/OF Peyton Wilson – 439 AB, .228/.338/.380, 14 HR, 68 BB, 115 K, 106 wRC+
Wilson doesn’t belong with the stragglers. He has crazy speed, legit double power, and is defensively versatile as an infielder/corner outfielder. This season, however, he took a pretty big step backward in what made him an exciting prospect. Sure he tied a career-best in home runs, but he dropped from 33 doubles in 2023 to 19 in 2024. He saw his batting average drop 58 points alongside a 28-point drop in OBP. He was trying to hit the ball in the air far too often and sacrificing hits in the process.
As a college bat, Wilson is already through his age-24 season. This season was a growth season for Wilson, with him tooling with his contact profile. It’s scary to make those kinds of changes at 24 years old and this season is cause for concern. He found success before changing his approach and ideally, he could make small tweaks without sacrificing his successes. He was still a useful asset to the Naturals’ squad but it’s concerning towards his potential going forward. The power is middling in his prospect grades but he had found a way to produce in the gaps. This season saw him turn away from that 2023 profile and try to beat outfielders over the top. He seemed to be under the ball consistently with a career-high 115 strikeouts and he couldn’t replicate his 16.9% HR/FB rate from his breakout 2022 season.
Wilson still has loads of potential and he will rise fast if he returns to form in 2025. He fills an immediate need for the Royals if he can stick at corner outfield and could slot into the middle of the lineup well. He took a major risk by going all in on a new style of hitting to try and develop the home run tool. If he can balance that out and bring back his gap skills he could be looking at a massive improvement from 2024. He fits in with the stragglers because of his drop in production. What looks to be a calculated risk could help him massively in 2025.
Standout: OF Gavin Cross – 360 AB, .261/.342/.428, 15 HR, 45 BB, 105 K, 115 wRC+
Gavin Cross struggled heavily in 2023, bottom line. In 2024 his numbers improved significantly and established that he isn’t quite in danger of becoming a busted prospect. Cross set personal bests in home runs and walks with the Naturals this season. His walk percentage fell (16.7% in ‘23 to 10.3% in ‘24) but his strikeout rate dropped too from 33.3% to 24.1%. His -37 wRC+ looks like a completely different player than his 2024 mark. While a bit lukewarm for a first-round pick, this season marks the most sustainable production out of Cross as a professional.
Cross managing to get on base 34% of the time and bat .261 are massive improvements from 2023 where he hit .203 and had an on-base below .300. He stole 30 bases and elevated the ball more than he has in any season to date. His power potential seems to be dipping a bit from what was expected out of the draft. With a higher rate of elevation and decent speed, there’s plenty of possibility for him to produce still. A lot of his increase in elevation comes from a 10% jump in his line-drive rate in 2024. 25% of his contact was line drives and 30.5% of that contact went opposite field. Cross pulls the ball plenty, but over half of his contact goes middle or opposite field. For a guy with his build and profile to combine those numbers, he’ll find success.
Kauffman will be a tough place for him to hit more than 25 home runs but he could hit 35 doubles to pair. With his analytics this season, there’s plenty of reason to expect a jump to AAA in 2025 and further improvement as a prospect. Look for his pull contact to turn into power with the opposite field supplementing his contact numbers. 2025 could be a big year for Cross in his path to the majors. His third full season is incoming…
Straggler: SS Tyler Tolbert – 393 AB, .260/.339/.353, 4 HR, 38 BB, 103 K, wRC+ 100
Tyler Tolbert was an exactly average hitter at AA according to his wRC+. At 26 and coming off the most well-rounded season of his career, he backslid and hurt most progress he made. His power got even worse, his average went down, and he was less of a benefit to his team. This isn’t to say Tolbert isn’t an asset, but his last-ditch effort to be an everyday player has failed.
In 2023, Tolbert won the organization’s George Brett Hitter of the Year award. His .755 OPS was a significant bookmark in his minor league career and he swatted 10 home runs. Ironically enough his wRC+ was a point higher this season but he looked far less promising in the categories we typically judge prospects by. The home runs dropped to just four and he hit in 12 fewer runs than his 50 RBI campaign last year. His lack of power is highlighted by incredibly high pull numbers over his career. If it isn’t developing further in the year 2024, the outlook isn’t high moving forward. Tolbert also hit 45.6% of his contact on the ground, severely limiting how often he can find extra-base hits. This year makes it seem like 2023 was simply an outlier in his production.
Tyler Tolbert brought home another organizational award in 2024. This time it was the Baserunner of the Year Award. He used his 60-grade speed to accrue 40 stolen bases on a 90% success rate. Two straight award-winning seasons show the organization values Tolbert as an asset. If they start to succeed more and find their cornerstones, the Royals could afford to keep him on the MLB roster as a baserunner. Does Jarod Dyson ring a bell? Now, Javier Vaz can also do this, is more versatile, and hits better but I wanted to mention this upside. Going on 26, Tolbert has a steep hill to climb to find the majors. The club still has an eye on him after a down 2024.
Standout: C Carter Jensen – 150 AB, .233/.300/.480, 8 HR, 15 BB, 45 K, 112 wRC+
Carter Jensen received his promotion to AA as the season wrapped up, playing for just a month and a half in Arkansas. His numbers for the season are far more impressive with 18 home runs and a .809 OPS inflated by a .359 on-base percentage. He took massive strides in High-A this season, carrying that success to the Naturals. The drop-off you see in his numbers simply accounts for his bat adjusting to a new level. Here we see the development of a legitimate power bat for the middle of the lineup.
First and foremost, Jensen has developed a very consistent walk tool. In AA, he walked 8.8% of the time, dropping from his A+ numbers. Before his promotion, however, he was walking 15.2% and getting on base over 38% of the time. With his power, Jensen could quickly slot into a fifth or sixth spot at the major league level. His potential is higher, sliding up that lineup with exponential success. Even with a drop in production at AA, we can see inherent value in the bat.
With the Naturals, Jensen still flashed tremendous power. Thirteen percent of his flyballs were home runs, and his ISO was a whopping .247. His isolated power numbers were, in fact, the best of his career with the Naturals last season, topping .200 for the first time. There’s a 20-home run pop in that bat and with the production at AA, we saw our first glimpse at a potential 30-35 season. It’s easy to be underwhelmed with the start of Jensen’s career with little power flashes and not enough average to compensate. In 2024, he broke out in a big way and did it at just 21 years of age. He’ll enter the 2025 season at the same age and push for yet another promotion.
Straggler: OF Diego Hernandez – 366 AB, .240/.271/.352, 8 HR, 16 BB, 97 K, 73 wRC+
Diego Hernandez has lived on the edge of the top 30 list for his whole career. Incredible speed and fielding with a weak bat and little contact ability profiled his potential. At 24, Hernandez hasn’t done much to warrant a spot in the top 30 but flashes of major potential have appeared periodically over small stretches of games. In 2024, that potential was missing from any stretch and he lost any momentum he had.
This was Hernandez’s first full season with one team in his minor league career. The consistency didn’t do much to help his numbers. His speed was infrequent on the basepaths with a meager .271 OBP, keeping him from doing what he does best. He spread the ball around well and had decent splits on his HR/FB ratio but hit the ball on the ground over half the time. The story of the season was Hernandez failing to capitalize on his strengths. Where one thing excelled, the opposing weakness overshadowed the potential effect it could have. An injury derailed his 2023 season and his return to the field was both underwhelming and counterproductive.
Hernandez was entering his last season to prove he was worth any extra attention. What transpired was disappointing, keeping any future expectations at bay. Sure, he has plenty of time to earn a promotion, but he is a late-blooming prospect in any best-case scenario. He will be 24 for the entirety of next season, and hopefully, another full year at AA will show us he can break open the hitting grades while capitalizing on his strengths.
Standout: C Luca Tresh – 353 AB, .250/.323/.429, 14 HR, 37 BB, 98 K, 110 wRC+
Catcher is by far the deepest position in the Royals system and Tresh is the shining example of why. His scouting grades don’t jump off the page and his numbers are only decent with the Naturals but he’s one of the most consistent hitters in the system. This season proves to me that he is the next over-producing backup catcher for this Royals team. In his age-24 season, Tresh bounced back from a 2023 campaign that saw him slump at AA and cast some doubt on his ability to be a big-league backstop. He changed his batted ball profile pretty drastically and leaned back into the hitting that had him breaking out in 2022.
In 2023, Tresh was pulling the ball 39.6% of the time and only 8.6% of his flyballs made it out of the park. His strikeout numbers went down, but so did his ISO, slugging, OBP, batting average, and therefore OPS. This was all just a season after he put up a 125 wRC+ between two levels in 2022 and hit 19 home runs in 104 games. What saw him bounce back in 2024 was a return to a pull-centric plate approach and stopped forcing the ball in the air. It’s easy to see that Tresh was concerned with his ability to succeed in pulling the ball with a mediocre power profile. After washing the changes he made Tresh was significantly more successful at the plate.
2024 saw a massive uptick in pull contact, jumping up to a whopping 56.7%. What followed this number was another huge jump in HR/FB ratio. 14% of his flyballs were big flies, topping Carter Jensen’s solid 13% that was mentioned earlier. He paced for over 20 home runs in a full major league season and did so even while hitting the ball on the ground more. His BABIP saw a nice jump too with these big changes in contact. 2023 saw a career-low .259 average on balls in play but Tresh was far more successful returning to his original contact profile this past season. He sat at a maintainable .301 BABIP which may surprise some seeing such inflated pull numbers. He isn’t beating out Jensen or Blake Mitchell for the future starting spot. He is still more than capable of being a role player at the MLB level.