Monday was as close to “must-watch” Spring Training baseball as it gets. That statement becomes a tad ironic considering the game wasn’t televised in any fashion, but I digress. The Kansas City Royals sent their Ace, Cole Ragans, to the mound in his first start of the spring. Behind him came two of the team’s most impressive pitching prospects. Luinder Avila and Steven Zobac pitched two innings apiece. Zobac is ranked third on our 2025 Royals Top Prospects list and Avila isn’t far behind him at seventh.

The two combined Monday for four full innings of work allowing two hits, two walks, and one earned run alongside five strikeouts. The box score doesn’t matter much in spring, but each pitcher’s arsenal is worth looking at. After all, that arsenal sets the arms apart and makes them such highly ranked prospects in the farm system. Here’s a look at each arm and their Monday performance.

Luinder Avila – 2.0 IP, 0H, 0ER, 1BB, 2 SO

Sinker (9): 96.8 mph, t98.5 | 2357 rpm | 33% CSW% | 50% Whiff%
4-Seam Fastball (8): 97.6 mph, t98.5 | 2337 rpm | 0% CSW% | 0% Whiff%
Curveball (6): 84.0 mph, t85.2 | 2888 rpm | 83% CSW% | 100% Whiff%
Changeup (2): 91.8 mph, t92.4 | 2086 rpm | 50% CSW% | 0% Whiff%

25 pitches, 50% Whiff%, 36% CSW%, 75% zone-contact%, 25% outside-swing%

It was a fantastic outing for Avila. The showing came heavily on the back of his dominant sinker/curveball combination. He’s quickly risen through the farm system and his development in the last two years has been impressive. To open 2023, Avila was throwing 91-93mph. He struggled to locate the fastball up in the strikezone. By mid-2023, Avila was finding more difficulty putting away hitters. He needed more velocity behind his heater and needed to locate it better. Opposing hitters had begun to wait on his curveball and were hitting it well.

That all changed in the 2024 season and into last year’s Fall League. Avila has begun to locate the fastball well, up in the strikezone. More notably, he’s found his stride, consistently hitting the upper 90s with both his four-seam fastball and his sinker. Those fastball improvements have made the curveball more effective once again. Avila’s ceiling has risen substantially. He’s effectively gone from a potential mid-inning reliever or swing-starter type to now potentially a mid-rotation starter or impact high-leverage reliever. Avila is the real deal and showed on Monday exactly why Kansas City protected him on their 40-man roster this offseason.

Steven Zobac – 2.0 IP, 2H, 1ER, 1BB, 3 SO

4-Seam Fastball (17): 94.8mph, t96.8 | 2385 rpm | 35% CSW% | 22% Whiff%
Cutter (9): 87.4mph, t88.4 | 2246 rpm | 33% CSW% | 20% Whiff%
Changeup (7): 87.6 mph, t88.8 | 1125 rpm | 14% CSW% | 25% Whiff%
Slider (3): 85.4mph, t85.8 | 2406 rpm | 33% CSW% | 0% Whiff%

36 pitches, 21% Whiff%, 31% CSW%, 80% zone-contact%, 29% outside-swing%

Avila’s improvements in 2024 were fantastic. Other arms, like Noah Cameron, took substantial strides forward as well. Amid all that, it was Zobac who took the most strides forward a season ago. In his first outing of the Spring, Zobac looked noticeably rusty in some aspects. Even with some rust, the arsenal remains one of the more high-ceiling in the Kansas City farm system. It was very fastball-heavy, with Zobac rarely utilizing his slider. The slider took notable steps forward last season but he only threw three of them in his first outing of the spring.

Zobac was an outfielder for much of his college career at Cal, becoming a full-time pitcher in just his final year with the Golden Bears. Despite that relative inexperience on the mound, he’s developed at light speed. Zobac’s two fastballs are both spun well but play up even more thanks to great command of the strikezone.

For what was his first start of the spring, it was extremely encouraging to see Zobac pick up largely where he left off last season. Neither Zobac nor Avila figures to be much of a factor at the big-league level this season, but both are front and center when it comes to the team’s more immediate future when it comes to impact pitching prospects.