The Royals drafted their second Volunteer of the class in the fifth round. Drew Beam was the first, and they’ll both join outfielder Jared Dickey who entered the system last summer out of Tennessee. Reliever A.J. Causey is an interesting arm. The Royals took him with the 138th overall pick, and he’s already signed for $477,500. The slot value for his pick was $505,000. That’s a small amount of pool savings, but it’s clear that the Royals loved the arm. Director of Amateur Scouting, Brian Bridges, spoke about Causey after day two of the draft. “It’s not a fun at-bat,” he said. Bridges praised the uniqueness that Causey offers, mentioning that he’s the type of arm team’s have gotten away from of late.

It was certainly a mixture of traditional and analytical scouting with Causey. He has a three-pitch mix featuring a slider with high spin rates, an “elite” changeup (as Bridges called it), and a low-90s fastball. I like the fit with Kansas City and really the overall profile as a whole. Causey’s stuff has plenty to like, but his delivery mechanics and release point do a lot to generate strikeouts all on their own. For that reason, it allows the Royals to focus on his arsenal. They can work on his pitch mix rather than trying to re-work mechanics to help him find better command. His mechanics are crisp and smooth, without much effort in his delivery.

AJ Causey gives the Royals a solid outline; now just to fill in the blanks

The delivery is good, and there’s enough funk and deception to allow Causey to be effective pretty quickly in pro ball. In 91.1 innings of work this season for Tennessee, he struck out 125 batters and walked 22. His ERA was 4.43, mostly because of his tendency to get bitten by the home run ball. He allowed 13 (almost 1.5 per nine innings) after allowing 12 the season prior with Jacksonville State. Causey leans heavily on chase rates, even missing some bats in the zone. However, as a soft-tosser essentially, there’s a lot to work through there. In the pro ranks, hitters are going to be even more punishing than in the SEC and he could quickly find that he needs to improve the fastball to find more success.

You can see here the best weapon for Causey is clearly his changeup. It plays very nicely off his slider and fastball, coming from the same release point but moving entirely differently from the other two offerings. It offers some arm-side fading action. All three pitches tunnel very closely together and that helps to create plenty of swing-and-miss.

What’s next from here for Causey? The Royals will likely send him to Low-A if he pitches any more this season. By the start of 2025, he should be pitching in High-A, likely as a reliever but there’s always a chance the Royals have him start some games until he no longer needs to. He did start six games for Tennessee in 2024 and was used often behind an opener even in the games he didn’t start. Maybe there’s work the front office can do with his low-90s sinker. Maybe they scrap it all together for now. Causey’s slider lives in the mid-70s, which could make a cutter in the upper 80s work if he can develop one. As it stands now, the fastball is going to get demolished in the pro ranks.

Causey is an interesting arm with funkiness to love and good potential to make it to a big-league bullpen someday. It’ll be fun to see him move through the system, hopefully alongside his former teammates at Tennessee. That’s a bond the Royals have looked to implement in recent years, whether by design or chance. They added the Oklahoma trio of David Sandlin, Brett Squires, and Chazz Martinez in recent drafts. Now signed, Causey heads to Arizona to start his professional career in Surprise before eventually moving to the full-season affiliated ranks.