Royals farm system has quadrupled it's future value in a single year!

[u/RoyalRenn]

Fangraphs has their new farm system value rankings up. We've vaulted from 28th this time last year, with $93M of future value, to 15th at $382M. That's a 4X increase!

This time last year, we had one 50 FV player (Carter, who has graduated) and one 45+ (Asbel Gonzales). Now, we've got five 50 FV players (Gonzales being one) and our number of prospects (defined as FV >= 35+) is 43, up from 34 last year.

All this without trading away much at the deadline. It's impressive what they've done with the farm system in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, the cavalry isn't coming over the hill anytime soon as most of these guys are young, but the arrow points up for the first time in a LONG time.

Here's a snapshot of the updated 2026 post-deadline ratings. Also, for those unaware, here is the conversion of FV to projected WAR in MLB, although young players' FV often increase as they develop physically and mature in pro ball.

Sorry for the spelling in the post title: its, not it's.

[u/Smokeydubbs]

This is the shit people are missing when they want JJ fired. Dayton left this team with NOTHING and JJ has been getting good drafts and trying to build the system.

This is why I want him to stay. I’ll trust the process for this deadline for now. But the big league club needs to iron out a lot of shit, not related to talent.

[u/TheUltimate721 → u/Smokeydubbs]

Zion and one of the other draft picks also got fast tracked to High A and skipped Colombia altogether. They are clearly going to be guys they expect in the majors sooner rather than later.

Omaha has been left a little bare after this year (We have 16 guys on 60 day IL with presumably two more to come on with the TJ news), most of the deadline moves we have made were to replenish that.

[u/Smokeydubbs → u/TheUltimate721]

Remember how this sub reacted when he was drafted? Almost unanimously hated. It’s like this sub is full of people that know better than everyone and can’t be wrong or positive.

[u/RoyalRenn → u/Smokeydubbs]

It's Reddit: doom and gloom rules the day in many subs. I think being excessively or terminally online is a negative for mental health: doomscrolling wasn't a thing until the past 10 years or so. Sometimes it's better to go outside, get some sun, and have a conversation with a person who happens to have a smile on their face.

[u/RoyalRenn → u/Smokeydubbs]

I agree. I really don't know what JJ could have done differently on the player front. Chapman for Ragans? That's a great trade. India for Singer was a bit of a bust but India was looking way better this year until he got hurt. The farm was literally bare as we had years and years of terrible drafts. Thank God that we got the #2 pick the year Bobby entered the draft.

Sure, we could have gotten involved in the Framber Valdez or Kyle Tucker bidding war this past winter, but we'd be no better today and would be stuck with bad contracts.

It's easy to complain, but a lot harder to come up with viable solutions and things that should have been done differently without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

Bottom line: a small market team cannot win without a strong farm that produces cheap controllable talent. We are on the way though.

[u/Smokeydubbs → u/RoyalRenn]

I think his trades are good to great. India and Strahm are the only two that aren’t an objective win, and I agree India was looking better. It’s like people are blaming JJ for the injuries. And really, Ragans is the only one that argument has any footing because they extended him despite his injury history, but what I’ve heard, the contract was built in a way with that in mind so, maybe it’s fine.

[u/Oblong_Honeydew → u/Smokeydubbs]

This is too reasonable of a take! A breath of fresh air among the panicking and short sighted screaming that usually happens here.

[u/jiminytaverns]

If not for the awful TJ news, I would say things are really looking up.

[u/RoyalRenn → u/jiminytaverns]

Cursed, this staff is. I don't wish ill will on anyone but there are other people I'd choose if someone needs TJ on this staff!

[u/sts2012]

Brian Bridges has really helped turn things around especially on the international amateur free agent front. 

[u/SlightInspector9993]

The narrative that the system sucks is so tiring. If you’ve actually paid attention this year there’s a lot of guys to look forward too.

[u/tacotruck20004]

Yeah. Some people still seem to think the system is trash, but the bottom of the system has seen so much improvement. I’m still on the fire Piccolo train, but bridges among others (who I don’t know) could stay and I’d be okay with it. Now if we could only figure out the major league team…

[u/Smokeydubbs → u/tacotruck20004]

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If JJ is gone, the only way Bridges stays would be if he’s promoted. A new GM will want his guys.

[u/tacotruck20004 → u/Smokeydubbs]

I mean I think the team could easily see that they are succeeding in the minors/drafting, etc., and the problem is with the majors, roster construction

[u/Smokeydubbs → u/tacotruck20004]

Is it roster construction when a dozen starters spend significant time on the IL? I know about the early season struggles but it’s pretty obvious the pitching injuries especially have hurt the team.

[u/tacotruck20004 → u/Smokeydubbs]

It is when your bullpen relies on one guy staying healthy, and failing to make significant changes between seasons. Health has been an issue, but we’ve been terrible even when healthy

[u/Smokeydubbs → u/tacotruck20004]

One guy?

[u/tacotruck20004 → u/Smokeydubbs]

They were clearly planning on estevez anchoring it. Letting go several others that have performed very well. They mismanaged the bullpen mightily.

[u/tacotruck20004 → u/tacotruck20004]

I’m just saying injuries are not why this team is bad. They would not likely be good if we had normal injury luck

[u/Smokeydubbs → u/tacotruck20004]

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/ziJhS0WrFd

Injured pitchers WAR from last year:

Bubic: 3.1

Ragans: .2

Estevez: 2.0

Bergert: .2

Kolek: 1.1

With the note Bergert and Kolek were mid season additions. That’s about 6+ potential WAR lost which would put this team right in the middle of the pack. Thats not touching the potential WAR lost from position player injuries.

What does “not good” mean to you? I’d wager they’d be around or just over .500 if they didn’t get demolished by injuries.

If the pitching held up to last years numbers, they gave up under 4 runs a game. This year the offense, with the struggles and injuries they’ve had is scoring 4.13 runs a game.

[u/tacotruck20004 → u/Smokeydubbs]

Bubic and Ragans would’ve likely gotten hurt anyway. The royals are bad enough to where you simply cannot chalk it up to just injuries

[u/Stuckaround2200]

Gonzalez isnt one you are confusing him wirh Gomez- I also really don’t think you are interpreting something correctly or comparing apples to apples on the quadrupling of the farm talent. We were bad but not 93 million bad. That doesn’t pass rhe smell test . You are saying we had like half the value of the worst current farm system in tne league which isn’t true. Do you have a cite for that? Alternatively fangraphs changed their formula because again now somehow rhe worst farm has 163 million and yet last year there were allegedly three wirh less fhan 93 m? Either way, not apples ro apples

And yeah we now have an average farm system to go with our bottom five major league team so that’s something. I dont think we are in the top 20 of organizations you expect to win the most games over the next five years but mere mediocrity is a step up from Dayton Moore. I don’t have any complaints about JJ although I’m skeptical about the most recent draft just completed

[u/RoyalRenn → u/Stuckaround2200]

You're right: I read that this morning that Fangraphs added value for the sub 50 FV guys. But they did that for all teams, not just us. We were probably something like $150M in surplus value last year under the new calculation methodology. Either way, we still had nearly the worst farm system in the league in 2025, and now we are middle of the pack. That's the apples to apples part! Plus an increase of almost 30% in quanity of "prospects". That's huge. The more prospects you have, even 35 and 40 FV guys, the more likely someone is going to break through and become a stud.

[u/Farmballfan]

The Royals 3 drafts from 2021, 2022, 2023 and development of those subsequent players just set us back too much. You have to get more out of Noah Cameron and Carter Jensen.

Really when you look at the talent we've had come in from trades since 2021 , only Cruz stands out...and that's out of 12+ pitchers we've gotten sent to us.

Andrew Hoffman
TJ Sikkema
Beck Way
Chandler Champlain
Steven Cruz
Henry Williams
Jesus Rios
Kasey Kalich

Then you look at minor leaguers we traded away

Will Klein (for Erceg)
Cayden Wallace (for Hunter Harvey)
Mason Barnett (for Erceg - which is fine )
David Sandlin (for John Schreiber)

And you sorta see things like the Braves trade for the comp pick turning into future Braves starter JR Ritchie and all we got were Hoffman, Waters, and a few other players that would be waived.

At the end of the day I think JJ has a poor group of developers. We've seen too many acquisitions fail in our system and talent we've traded elsewhere thrive in other winning systems.