With the world on fire and seemingly every Royals fan deciding the season is over, looking in on our farm system for guys that can help the team now felt productive. In this scenario, the team needs a dude who can at least stoke the flames and depthen our bats. A trade is off the table until further into the season, so we look to our system for help.
This article was originally planned to rally for one specific player who fills a particular need for this team. Ultimately, it was realized that another player is performing off the charts in AAA and requires a look regardless of positional utility. Here we dive into a couple of players who have begun to age out of minor league viability and may deserve a look before they become too old to continue developing. Alongside them are two players who have made the bigs before, produced at AAA, but may not have much expectation to continue doing so with the Royals this season.
Whether it’s a lack of big league value in the past or a lack of a 40-man roster spot, these four guys aren’t with the squad right now. I can promise you that you won’t like at least one of these guys. I can promise you you’ll be indifferent enough to not like another one or two of these guys. The final player is new enough to the organization and is performing well enough that a look in the MLB may just be the team’s best option right now.
John Rave
Rave has been my go-to prospect since Spring Training, where he slashed .290/.371/.355. His .726 OPS is a bit underwhelming, but he showed contact skills and the ability to work a few walks. In 2024, he joined the team in Arizona and slugged a much better .440 over 13 games. His ceiling relies on a very small sample size of games played alongside major league talent. Regardless, his past two seasons at AAA have shown a very impressive gap-power profile that relies on a pull approach and a decent amount of speed.
Rave split 78% of his defensive innings almost perfectly between centerfield and left. He played the other 22% in right field. Needless to say, he can cover space in all three fields, even if he feels more like a corner guy at the next level. He led the 2024 Storm Chasers in home runs with 21 and fell one short of the team lead in doubles with 32. The only player with a higher OPS was Drew Waters, with 22 fewer games played. What stands out about his profile to me is the fact that he has walked over 10% in every single season he has played to date. His K-rate has consistently diminished as he plays longer in the minors. What was 28.1% in Low-A and Rookie ball in 2019 was down to 21.6% in AAA last season. A career high .211 ISO rounds out an extremely under-the-radar 2024 season for Rave.
Some flaws in his game hint at more development needed. Most importantly, Rave hits the ball on the ground 56.5% of the time to this point in the 2025 season. He has hit more groundballs than any other type of contact in every minor league season he has played in. The pull% numbers don’t ease much concern either. Every minor league season has seen him pull the ball over 40% of the time. To his credit, his opposite field contact and middle contact are almost identical, which helps his profile a bit. To combat this is a 19.2% of outside pitches swung at. The AAA average in O-Swing% in 2024 was 25.1%. Alongside his decision-making is an 85.9% Z-Contact% that sits around average in AAA. His game isn’t screaming to be promoted, but he’s by far the closest outfielder who isn’t on the 40-man.
Cam Devanney
Devanney is the current darling of the Royals system after an insane start at AAA that doesn’t seem to be slowing down yet. He’s slashing .395/.460/.791 through 13 games and leads the International League in multiple key categories. Firstly, his 1.251 OPS is the best in his league and leads the Storm Chasers by a wide margin. Behind that, his league-leading wRC+ of 229 has led to 14 runs created, more than one per game. The most eye-popping stat is Devanney’s .395 ISO, which is also a league-leader. For those unaware of the stat, I typically start to sit forward in my chair for a guy with an ISO over .200.
Devanney has never flashed this type of ability over a full season, which has me cautiously optimistic. Fangraphs has his raw power at a 50 grade and his hit tool at a 35, mostly thanks to his best average in a full season being a .286 in rookie ball. In 2024, Devanney saw a seemingly random spike in ground contact that hurt his numbers a bit. Looking at his numbers, he is consistently more productive when he is getting the ball in the air. This speaks to his power grade being far more valuable than his contact tool. His worst seasons, therefore, line up pretty well with seasons where his GB/FB ratio is over 1.00
So far in 2025, that hasn’t been an issue. He is hitting 71% of his balls in the air, between flyballs and line drives, with a whopping 28.6% of his flyballs going over the fence. Almost half of Devanney’s contact is back up the middle (46.9%), and he has enough contact to the opposite field that his 31% pull rate isn’t predictable enough for a hard shift. His .64 GB/FB rate in 2025 seems to be the sweet spot and is the lowest the rate has been in his career. This speaks even further to the concept that the ball in the air is a very, very good thing for Devanney. While he doesn’t fill a need in the outfield, the infielder seems to fit the mold of a second or third baseman. This gives the Royals more reason to get India, Garcia, and Massey for reps in other spots.
Nick Loftin
The Royals have tried multiple times to get Nick Loftin to work at the MLB level. What’s resulted so far is a lack of power that’s seemingly somewhere in the frame and little contact to make up for it. There was hope that Loftin could be a utility infielder for this team a few seasons ago. That hope has vanished, and now the hope is to get a league-worthy bench bat out of him. Loftin has started 2025 playing extremely well, but some underlying stats don’t excite most analysts. His slash is a healthy .321/.500/.411 with five doubles and a 25.6% walk rate.
What helps Loftin stand out amongst the rest of the crop is his .500 on-base percentage over 78 plate appearances. This is the best rate in the International League by any player with more than 50 PA. He has never struck out a bunch at any level, including the MLB, but the walk rate has never been this crazy. This is an unsustainable number with double the walks to strikeouts (20:10), but it could lead to him getting more pitches in the zone to hit. An increased power potential could easily get him back to the bigs, and balls in the zone would increase the likelihood of that happening.
Loftin’s Z-Contact is a very nice 93%, but he has always been able to connect at any level he’s played at. He’s hitting linedrives 34.8% of the time, but he’s having to pull the ball 61.7% of the time to middle the ball enough to do so. Finally, he has 5 doubles already, but an ISO of .089 shows a severe lack of hard contact in the air. Loftin has multiple tools that are big-league ready, but a lot of them can’t produce without a power tool that at least concerns pitchers enough to care. It feels harsh to say he needs to find some pop to make it back up, but we have yet to see the 45-grade raw power.
Harold Castro
I will officially go on the record as the first writer to say the Royals could give this guy a chance. I’ve been extremely vocal that he shouldn’t be anything other than competition for our AAA position players. That being said, he is starting the season pretty well at Omaha, and in another month, the offense in Kansas City may be dire. A .291/.361/.491 slash presents a pretty well-rounded approach to AAA pitching that has Castro just behind these other three guys with the Storm Chasers.
His numbers aren’t crazy, they don’t jump off the page, and they aren’t indicative of more at the next level. What we most likely see here is a 31-year-old MLB vet seeing AAA pitching. Regardless, he has posted a solid .200 ISO, .291 average, and average exit velocity of 89.3 mph. He’s spraying the ball well, with 35.7% of his contact going to opposite way. He also hits the ball in the air over half the time, and 15.4% of his flyballs are going over the wall.
The 31-year-old won’t bring any power to the lineup and certainly is nowhere near the top of the list for this front office. Unfortunately, the experience he brings to the lineup, defensive versatility, and decent success at AAA make him one of the more immediate band-aids for the Major League squad. He was a flyer signed during the offseason to a minor league deal. It’s a flyer we may end up taking off the wall.
Image Credit: Gray Aust, Omaha Storm Chasers
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